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Library of The Theological Seminary 


PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 


C=) 


PRESENTED BY 
The Estate of 
Victor H, Lukens 





e/ 





The Healing Question 


An examination of the claims of Faith-Healing 
and Divine Healing systems in the 

light of the Scriptures 
and History 





By 
ARNO CLEMENS GAEBELEIN 
Editor of “Our Hope’ 


PusBticaTion OrFice “Our Horr” 
456 FourtH AVENUE 
New York City 


And All Booksellers 


Copyright 
September, 1925 


To my friend 
Howard A. Kelly, M.D., LL.D. 


one of the beloved physicians, with gratitude for 
his God given skill, which under His blessing has 
saved so many lives, and brought help and com- 
fort to the suffering, and in deep appreciation of 


his loyalty to the Word of God and the Christ of 
God. 


CONTENTS 
Mm He trealing, CHESTION v.02 be Hie eit hry enom name 
The Miracles of Healing by the Lord Jesus Christ... . 
Miracles of Healing in the Book of Acts............. 


What the Epistles Teach as to Physical Healing...... 


Nhracies ot, Healing in «Plistory.).. ccc nee e a alee 


Examination of Scripture Passages Used for Divine 
BORING is cic!s ie i'sle aah CART an ote: ea tee 


An Examination of the Works and Results of Divine 
bt at 8 Con ee BURGER IR ORT IA MRA MOH TU RCC peaVi UUT MCT kis ue. 


70 


CHAPTER I 
The Healing Question 


*“Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are asa 
sleep. In the morning they are like grass which groweth up. 
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening 
it is cut down, and withereth. For we are consumed by 
Thine anger, and by Thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast 
set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of 
Thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in 
wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days 
of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of 
strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength 
labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away” 
(Psalm xc:5-10). ‘“‘My days are swifter than a weaver’s 
shuttle” (Job vii:6). ‘Man that is born of a woman is of 
few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, 
and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow and con- 
tinueth not” (Job xiv:1, 2). “He is chastened also with 
pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with 
strong pain, so that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul 
dainty meat. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be 
seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out. Yea, his 
soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroy- 
ers” (Job xxxiii:19-22). “For what is your life? It is even 
a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
away” (James iv:14). 

These few passages from the Word of God deal with human 
existence, the shortness of human life, its uncertainty and the 
sorrows connected with it. The first utterance of a new born 
babe is a tearful cry of pain. Sickness and pain, sorrows and 


5 


6 THE HEALING QUESTION 


tears follow, as the common lot of the human race. Millions 
die in infancy; other multitudes are swept away by disease 
and death before they reach middle age; but a few attain 
the fourscore years. Why is it thus if man, made a little 
lower than the angels, is the offspring of a benevolent God? 
The answer which the pagan evolutionary theory attempts 
to give, we pass by as unworthy of our consideration. There 
is a more satisfactory answer to this question. But who is 
going to tell us what happened in the remotest past? Who 
is going to lift the veil which covers the cradle-history of 
humanity? Primitive man has left no records. Research is 
unavailing. Knowledge through these channels on the enigma 
of human existence and human suffering is impossible. 
Man has received the needed knowledge through another 
source. 

There is a God. Only a fool denies His existence. In His 
Being He is infinite. He is eternal. He is all-wise. Omni- 
potence, omniscience and absolute holiness are His attributes. 
Such a Being necessitates self-revelation. He created man 
and has given him the capacity to know Him as His Creator, 
and to be in fellowship with Him. If God had not revealed 
Himself to man He would not be God. He has revealed 
Himself and spoken to man. That revelation is the Bible, 
the Word of God. The Bible is the only book in the world 
which is supernatural, and has every possible mark of the 
divine revelation of God. In it God offers to His creature 
true knowledge of those things which man cannot discover 
by research. 

In spite of all the boasting, modern infidelity in every 
nook and corner of the camp of Christendom, the solid 
foundation of God’s truth still stands—‘‘In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth.”’ Upon this unshakable, 
eternal rock;is built all that follows in His Word. Let them 


THE HEALING QUESTION 7 


keep on sneering at the three chapters in the beginning of the 
Bible, and class them with mythical folklore, these chapters 
will outlive all the sneers and infidelity of the future, as 
they have outlived all the attacks of the past. Here we 
find our question answered as to man’s present condition. 
The answer which God gives has satisfied the greatest intel- 
lects of the human race in past ages; it still satisfies the 
heart of man. | 

Man is the creature of God, called into existence by a 
creative act of God, created in His own image. He is seen 
originally as a creature filled with wisdom and knowledge, 
understanding God’s creation, whose lord he is called to be. 
He was in fellowship with God. ‘Then came a catastrophe. 
He transgressed. We do not enter into the details of the 
birth of sin, through that being who is the author of sin. 
Man became a sinner, lost his fellowship with God and 
his inheritance. God spake then in His holiness. He an- 
nounced the curse. Solemn are the last words He spake, 
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
return unto the ground; for out of it thou wast taken; for 
dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return’ (Gen. 
iii:19). Death came into the world by sin. Human existence 
from the cradle is now a march towards an open grave, and 
on the way is sickness, sorrow, pain, tears, and all kinds 
of physical and mental affliction. God also spoke in His 
Love and announced Him, the seed of the woman, who would 
in time become the Saviour of a lost race. 

There has been a “healing question’’ from the very start 
of history. The human race has wrestled from the beginning 
with sickness and disease, and tried in some way to rid 
itself of these bodily afflictions. The earliest intelligent 
records of the past we possess, going back several thousand 
years before Christ, are the cuneiform inscriptions. These 


8 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Accadian and Sumerian records have much to say about 
diseases. Disease was looked upon by these nations of 
the earliest times as being the work of evil spirits. Incan- 
tations and magic were the prescribed cure, as they are still 
among many nations of the world today. 

Throughout this Christian age there has been a “healing 
question” which is more fully dealt with in a chapter of this 
volume. 

The “healing question” in which we are concerned is 
from the religious view point. The Lord Jesus Christ 
healed all diseases while on earth, He cleansed the lepers 
and raised the dead. Miracles of healing took place under 
the preaching of the Apostles. Throughout the history of 
the Church claims were made of miraculous cures through ~ 
certain men. Fanatical movements sprang up laying claim 
to a restoration of the gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy © 
and the gift of healing. Relics and shrines were also sought 
by the sick and afflicted, as they are still superstitiously used 
in Roman and Greek Catholicism. ‘The Camisards, called 
the French prophets, the Shakers, the Mormons, the Spir- 
itists, the Irvingites and similar sects all claim to heal the 
sick. Christian Science and other metaphysical cults 
claim to have relief for the physical sufferings of man. 

What interests us mostly in this volume is faith-healing, 
or as it is also called, “Divine healing.” During the last 
few years a veritable craze in healing of diseases by faith 
seems to have taken hold of thousands of professing Chris- 
tians. Men and women go through the land promising 
healing of any disease on the simple condition of faith. 
Even diseases which still baffle intelligent and painstaking 
research and treatment, like cancer, are claimed to vanish 
completely before faith. As one faith-healer by name of 
Bosworth declares, ‘‘It is just as easy to be healed of cancer 


THE HEALING QUESTION 9 


as to have your sins forgiven.” These faith-healers use 
the Scriptures to back up their claims. They tell us that 
inasmuch as “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today 
and forever” and inasmuch as He has commanded to heal 
the sick, the same miracles He did may also be done today. 
The most unscripturable assertions are made by these Di- 
vine healers. The reported “miracles” of healing have often 
been exposed as falsehoods. The works and results which 
follow their campaigns have frequently been disastrous. 
Hypnotism and deceptions of various degrees are practiced 
by some of these advocates of faith healing. We feel it 
is about time to examine the whole question of faith- 
healing, or, “Divine healing,’’? and to show its unscriptural- 
ness, as well as to expose the false claims as to miraculous 
healings. This is the reason why we wrote this volume. 
We want to help the household of faith and guard them 
against one of the most subtle delusions of our times. 

We feel assured the truth as set forth in this volume is 
greatly needed, and we believe the Lord will graciously use 
this testimony for His Word, and the witness against this 
present-day healing delusion. 


CRATER NY 
The Miracles of Healing by the Lord Jesus Christ 


“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears 
of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man 
leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; 
for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in 
the desert” (Isaiah xxxv:5, 6). These words are a prophecy 
predicting the blessings and the glory of the promised 
kingdom. He through whom these great blessings, described 
in this entire chapter, as well as elsewhere, will ultimately 
be accomplished appeared on earth as man, in the form 
of a servant. That blessed One is Himself the greatest 
miracle. His whole life from the moment of conception by 
the Holy Spirit, when He came upon the Virgin of Nazareth, 
to His ascension in His glorified human body, is beyond our 
powers of conception or explanation. Here is where the 
modernistic-rationalist makes his fatal mistake. Instead of 
believing in the supernaturalness of the Lord Jesus Christ 
and worshipping Him, the modernist tries to explain His 
Person. He cannot be explained. In order to bring the 
Lord Jesus Christ down to the level of common humanity 
the modernist denies His miraculous birth, His miraculous 
life, His miraculous resurrection and ascension, as wellas 
the miracles He performed. To accomplish this the rational- 
ism which is being taught in many institutions of learning 
impeaches the Gospel records. They are not trustworthy. © 
The miraculous element is legendary. It was added by 
others to the original story of Christ, to surround Him with 
the halo of Deity. It is astonishing that men, who claim 
ripe scholarship, can make such absurd and false claims. 


10 


THE HEALING QUESTION 11 


If they are scholars they must know that the Gospel records 
as we possess them belong to the most reliable historical 
documents in the possession of the race. ‘The claim that the 
miraculous is spurious in the four Gospels is a falsehood. 
If there is no miraculous Christ, who. performed miracles 
of various kinds, then the Old Testament with its miracles 
and prophecy must also be branded a falsehood (as is done 
by modernists). This is the road which leads into the night 
of atheism. 

We are concerned exclusively with the miracles of healing, 
which our Lord performed during His ministry on earth. 
We shall first of all briefly record them as given in the 
Synoptics and the Gospel of John. 

Matthew 1v:23-24. “And Jesus went about all Galilee, 
teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel 
of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of disease among the 
people. And His fame went throughout all Syria; and they 
brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with 
divers diseases and torments, with those which were possessed 
with demons, and those which were lunatick, and those that 
had the palsy; and He healed them.” This is the first 
time we find His miracles of healing mentioned in the Gospel 
of Matthew. We note that the preaching of the Gospel of 
the Kingdom, announcing the nearness of the promised 
kingdom, is closely connected with the healing of diseases. 

Matthew v1ii:1-4; Mark 1:40; Luke v:12-14. Here a 
leper is healed by Him. “Jesus put forth His hand, and 
touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean. And immediately 
his leprosy was cleansed.” He speaks as the sovereign 
Lord, with a majestic, omnipotent, “‘I will.’ When Miriam, 
Moses’ sister, was stricken with leprosy, Moses cried to the 
Lord, Heal her now! She had to be excluded for seven days, 
then she was permitted to return to the camp. A greater 


12 THE HEALING QUESTION 


than Moses is here! He healed by the finger of God, the 
sign that the Kingdom was come upon them (Luke xi:20). 

Matthew vitt:5-13; Luke v11:1-10. ‘The healing of the 
centurion’s servant who was sick and ready to die is the next 
miracle. He was sick of the palsy and was grievously 
tormented. While the Lord had healed the leper by touch, 
He did not come near the sick servant; He healed him by 
His word. The significance of this will be pointed out 
elsewhere. 

Matthew viti:14-15; Mark 1:30-31; Luke 10:38, 39. He 
healed Peter’s mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever. 
‘“And He touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she 
arose, and ministered unto them.” Like the healing of 
the leper, the cure was instantaneous. The fever dropped 
down to normal in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. 
Nor was she weak after the fever had gone. She arose at 
once and began to minister to the company, the evidence 
that a perfect cure had been made. 

Matthew viti:16, 17; Mark 1:32-34; Luke iv:40, 41. That 
evening brought a great demonstration of His power to heal. 
Many demon-possessed people were brought to Him. He © 
cast them out by His word, and healed all that were sick. 
The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is quoted. The perversion 
of this text by the divine healing systems will be fully dealt 
with in another chapter, as well as the great prophetic 
meaning of that famous prophecy in Isaiah. 

Matthew v111:28-35; Mark 0:1-21; Luke 0111:26-40. Mat- 
thew gives an account of two men possessed with demons; 
Mark and Luke speak only of one. ‘There were two but 
one of them must have been the more prominent and the 
most afflicted. The Lord singled him out as His special 
witness. Another solution of the difficulty may be found 
in the dispensational Jewish character of the Gospel of 


THE HEALING QUESTION 13 


Matthew. He also speaks of two blind men healed; Mark 
and Luke of only one, that is Bartimaeus. ‘The two 
demon-possessed and the two blind men picture the spiritual 
condition of all Israel, the house of Judah and the house of 
Israel. 

Matthew ix:1-8; Mark it:3-12; Luke v:18-26. Another 
paralytic is healed, after the Lord pronounced the forgive- 
ness of his sins. It was again an instantaneous cure, with 
the return of perfect strength, for he was able to carry his 
bed. 

Matthew ix:20-23; Mark 0:25-34; Luke v111:43-48. The 
Lord is on the way to raise the ruler’s daughter from the 
dead. A woman who was diseased with an issue of blood 
for twelve years, touched in faith the hem of His garment, 
believing that she would be made whole. She was healed 
immediately as the Lord felt that virtue had gone out from 
Him. 

Matthew 1x:23-25; Mark 0:35-43; Luke 0111:49-56. These 
‘passages contain the first evidence that the Lord Jesus 
Christ has the power to raise the dead. Jairus’s daughter 
_had died. She was not in a cataleptic state. There were 
eye-witnesses who knew she was dead. When He said, 
“Weep not; she is not dead but sleepeth” they laughed 
Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. ‘There were also 
eye-witnesses that when he took her by the hand and said 
“Talitha cumi”! the twelve year old girl arose and walked. 

Matthew ix: 27-31. Two blind men appealed to Him for 
healing. “Then He touched their eyes, saying, According 
to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened; 
and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man 
know it.” 

Matthew ix:31-33. The healing of a dumb man possessed 
with a demon followed immediately upon the healing of 


14 THE HEALING QUESTION 


the two blind men. The dumb spake in such a manner 
that the multitudes marveled, saying, “It was never so in 
Israel.” 

Matthew 1x:35; Mark vi:5. He continued in His Galilean 
ministry of preaching the kingdom and healing every disease 
and sickness among the people. In Nazareth, His own 
city, He laid hands on a few sick folk and healed them. He 
marveled because of their unbelief. 

Matthew x:1-10; Mark 01:7-13; Luke 1x:1-6. As the whole 
land, every town and every village had to hear the message 
of the kingdom, not by any means the Gospel of Grace, as 
it is proclaimed after His finished work on the Cross, but 
the message of the literal kingdom promised to Israel, He 
sent forth His twelve disciples. He gave them power, His 
own power, over unclean spirits, and to heal all manner of 
diseases and sicknesses. He gave them but one text to 
preach, ‘“The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” with the com- 
mand, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, 
cast out demons; freely ye have received, freely give.” 
Miracles of healing were then performed by the twelve, 
just as the Lord Jesus had performed them, for it was His 
power through them, which operated. How this commis- 
sion is misused by divine healers with their unscriptural 
claims is elsewhere dealt with in this volume. | 

Matthew xi:5. This passage shows the many miracles 
performed by Him in the presence of witnesses, attesting 
His Messiahship. 

Matthew xii:10-14; Mark 111:1-6; Luke vi:6-11. A with- 
ered hand is restored by Him, not in a gradual process, but 
instantaneously. 

Matthew «11:22-24; Luke xi:14. Another afflicted one 
with dumbness and blindness, produced by demon-posses- 
sion, was healed by Him. All careful students of the Gospel 


THE HEALING QUESTION 15 


of Matthew know that the twelfth chapter is the great 
divide in this Gospel. The message of the kingdom had 
been rejected. Indications showed that the King Himself 
would be rejected. After the twelfth chapter the message 
of the kingdom being at hand is no longer heard. The King 
begins to speak of the mysteries of the kingdom and also 
of His coming passion. It is therefore very significant 
that in chapters xiii to the end of this Gospel fewer miracles 
are recorded, while in the beginning of Matthew miracles 
upon miracles of healing are found. 


Matthew xiti:58. He did not many mighty miracles 
there because of their unbelief. They did not believe in 
Him as the promised King-Messiah and there was no ory 
stration of His power. s 


Maithew xiv:34-36. He had spent the night on the moun- 
tain top. His disciples were on the sea and the ship was 
_ tossed with waves. In the fourth watch He came. In 
the morning another great healing scene took place. The 
dispensational aspect is pointed out later. 


Matthew xv:21-28; Mark vi1:24-30. This is the first defi- 
nite miracle of healing after the kingdom message had been 
rejected. It is a heathen woman of Syro-Phenicia who ap- 
peals to Him for her daughter. He answered her not, be- 
cause she used His title as ‘Son of David,” to which she had 
no right. But He healed her daughter as soon as the mother 
appealed to Him as Lord and manifested her faith in Him. 

Matthew xv:29-31; Mark 11:31:37. A great multitude 
was healed immediately after the healing of the Syro- 
Phenician daughter. 


Matthew xvit:14-21; Mark ix:14-29; Luke ix:37-43. A 


demon-possesseed son is delivered right after the transfigura- 
tion. 


16 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Maithew xx:29-34; Mark x:46-52; Luke xviii:35-43. The 
healing of these two blind men, one of whom was Bartimaeus, 
is the last miracle of healing recorded in the Gospel of 
Matthew. 

In the Gospels of Mark and Luke we find a few miracles of 
healing which are not mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. 

- Mark 1:21-28; Luke 10:31-37. This incident happened in 

the synagogue of Capernaum. We notice especially that 
the unclean spirit confessed the Lord Jesus Christ as the’ 
Holy One of God. There was perfect deliverance. 

Mark 011:32-37. Mark records this miracle exclusively. 
The deaf man with an impediment in his speech is com- 
pletely healed after the Lord had put His fingers into his 
ears and touched his tongue and uttered the word 
“Ephphatha.” 

Mark viti:22-26. This miracle is also peculiar to Mark. 
He spit on his eyes, put His hands on him, and after He put 
His hands on him another time, the man saw perfectly. 

Luke v11:11-16. This miracle is reported only by Luke. 
It is the second time, when our Lord manifested His 
divine power in raising the dead. 

Luke viit:2. Mary Magdalene, one of our Lord’s most 
devoted followers, was healed by Him of evil spirits and 
infirmities. We do not know at what time it occurred. 
The fact of the miracle is mentioned in this verse. | 

Luke x:1-12, As He sent forth the twelve so He sent 
forth seventy disciples into the harvest. In connection 
with the preaching of the kingdom they were to heal the 
sick. 

Luke x111:10-17. ‘This miracle is not recorded elsewhere 
in the Synoptics. The woman who had a spirit of infirmity 
for eighteen years, bound by Satan, was instantaneously 
and perfectly loosed. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 17 


Luke xiv:1-6. The man healed of dropsy in the house of 
a Pharisee is also recorded by Luke only. 

Luke xvi1:11-19. ‘The cleansing of the ten lepers is like- 
wise peculiar to the Gospel of Luke. They obeyed His com- 
mand and “as they went they were cleansed.” 

Luke xx11:50-51. All the Gospels record the action of 
Peter in smiting the servant of the High Priest and cutting 
_ off his right ear, but only Luke states that the Lord restored 
the cut off ear by a miracle. Nothing was needed to stop 
the hemorrhage, nor a bandage to keep the ear in place, 
to give the severed ear a chance to knit itself in place. It 
was an instantaneous cure. 
‘And now we turn to the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of 
John. None of the miracles of healing recorded in the 
Synoptic Gospels appears anywhere in the fourth Gospel. 
The omission is explained by the purpose of this Gospel. 
But while the many miracles of the Gospels of Matthew, 
Mark and Luke are omitted, the Holy Spirit through the 
pen of the beloved disciple gives the account of four miracles 
which do not appear in the other Gospels. 

The first miracle in the Gospel of John is the turning 
of water into wine at the marriage of Cana in Galilee, and 
the second, marked out as such, is the healing of the noble- 
man’s son. 

John 10:46-54. The nature of the disease is not stated, 
but the fact is given that when the Lord spoke the word, 
at the same hour the fever left him. 

John v:1-15. The healing of the impotent man, who had 
been in that condition for thirty-eight years. When the 

Lord Jesus said, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk,” he was 

immediately whole. As a result of this miracle the Lord 
gave that magnificient self-witness, in which He reveals 
His Deity. 


18 THE HEALING QUESTION 


John ix. The healing of the man born blind. He made 
a paste of clay, anointed his eyes, and after the man had 
washed in the pool of Siloam he had perfect sight. 

John x1:1-44, The raising of Lazarus from the dead, 
after he had been dead for four days, so that the sister of 
Lazarus declared, “Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he 
has been dead four days.” ‘This is the greatest of all the 
miracles our Lord performed. It is also the minutest in 
description, and so well authenticated that only the most 
out-spoken infidels, to whom some of the religious modern- 
ists of our times belong, can deny it. 

The passages we have quoted from the four Gospels con- 
tain the record of the different miracles of healing our Lord 
performed in His three years’ ministry. We do not know . 
how many He healed. Several times we read of multitudes 
who came to Him, and that He healed them all. There 
may have been hundreds of sick folks who crowded around 
Him. Not one of those who sought His help was ever 
turned away. Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit did not report 
all His miracles of healing (John xxi:25). Certain 
Apocryphal New Testament writings, notably the Evan- 
gelium Infantae, contain also supposed miracles of healing, 
but they are entirely untrustworthy. 

The four Gospels tell us that He raised three persons from 
the state of physical death, the young daughter of Jairus, 
the widow’s son at Nain, and His friend Lazarus. He 
healed and cleansed completely those afflicted with that 
dreadful disease known as leprosy. He healed those who 
were constitutionally blind, deaf and dumb. Paralysis of 
long standing, dropsy, epilepsy, different forms of insanity 
and fevers were healed by His divine power. A withered 
arm, dried up so that it hung lifeless, was completely re- 
stored, and a member of the body, an ear which had been 





THE HEALING QUESTION ane 


severed by the stroke of a sword, was miraculously put 
back into its place. We do not think that even a scar was 
left. We doubt not but every disease and every infirmity 
known in those days was healed by Him. 

It is also noteworthy that of the individual cases no two 
were exactly alike. Some suffered more than others; some 
came personally to Him; others had their needs presented 
by relatives and friends; some appealed to Him in faith 
and others made no appeal. Most of those healed were 
Israelites; several were Gentiles. The greatest praise was 
given by a Samaritan, the greatest faith displayed by a 
Roman officer, and by the Syro-Phenician mother who ap- 
pealed for her daughter. He often healed by touch; some- 
times He healed without touching the sick one; at other 
times the sick touched the hem of His garment. Most were 
healed in His immediate presence, others were healed being 
miles away from where the Lord ministered. He never 
used the well known oriental remedy, oil. His disciples 
evidently did (Mark vi:13). One man born blind He sent 
to wash in the pool of Siloam, after He had covered his eyes 
with a paste of clay; He spit on another man’s blind eyes 
and put His fingers into the ears of a deaf man. Why He 
did it in this way we do not know, unless it was for the reason 
of showing us that He was not bound to any form; He 
could do as it pleased Him. Then in the place where His 
rejection was the most pronounced, in His own country 
where He was brought up, He could not do mighty works, 
and He marveled on account of their unbelief. But there 
was no faith manifested in connection with the three resur- 
rections from the dead. Though He said to the ruler, ‘‘Be 
not afraid, only believe” there is nothing to show that he 
believed that the Lord would bring the dead child to life.* 

*According to Matthew the ruler said, ““My daughter is even now 


dead.” According to Mark and Luke she was dying. He knew she 
was as good as dead though she had not yet actually died. 


20 THE HEALING QUESTION 


He halted the funeral procession at the gate of Nain, and, 
moved with compassion, He raised to life the widow’s son. 
But there was no faith displayed by anyone, nor a single 
prayer offered for the resurrection of the young man. Mary 
and Martha, while they believed on Him as the Christ, 
the Son of God, did not manifest strong faith that Lazarus 
would be raised from the dead. 

We also note the many occasions where the Lord Jesus 
Christ forbade the wider publication of His miracles of 
healing. Most of them were done in an unostentatious 
manner. And what He preached He also practiced. When 
He sent out His disciples, delegating to them His own 
divine power to heal, He commissioned them in these words, 
“Freely ye have received, freely give.’ He made no 
charges, nor received money from those whom He healed. 

We also call attention to the fact that many diseases, 
afflictions and infirmities the Lord healed were the result 
of demoniac possession. It would be a very serious error 
to say, as is being taught by divine healing fanatics, that 
every bodily pain or sickness today is the result of the direct 
work of demons. 

Demon possession was a terrible curse in the days our 
Lord was on earth. The whole nation was aware of this 
terrible affliction, and maintained a special class of exorcists 
whose business it was to deal with these cases. The unseen. 
world of evil spirits must have anticipated the coming and 
the ministry of the Son of God in the Holy -Land, and in 
taking possession of a multitude of victims, tried to oppose 
and hinder the Lord. They knew Him, for they confessed 
Him as the Son of God. Some had more than one demon; 
Mary Magdalene had been delivered of seven; some had 
legions. The poor victims suffered untold agonies. Some 
wandered around naked, had their abodes among graves, 


THE HEALING QUESTION 21 


cut themselves with stones, had supernatural strength. 
They had fits, fell into the water and into the fire, foamed 
at the mouth, gnashed with their teeth, had paralysis agitans, 
trembling from head to foot, and were otherwise afflicted. 
That demon possession today is not only possible but an 
actual and most solemn fact, we shall more fully demon- 
strate when we deal in this volume with the Pentecostal- 
Healing delusion. | 

The Lord Jesus Christ manifested His power in casting 
out these unlawful tenants of the human soul, and delivering 
all their victims. 


The Meaning of our Lord’s Miracles of Healing 


The miracles of our Lord are; in the first place, the evidence 
of His Deity. By these miracles of healing He revealed the 
attributes of His Godhead. Each one of them manifests 
His omnipotent power. He never prayed that a certain 
miracle might be granted unto Him. He commanded— 
“T will; be thou clean!’ “I say unto thee, Arise!” ““Talitha 
cumi,” ‘“Ephphatha,” ‘Receive thy sight.”’ When He 
uttered words of praise before the tomb of Lazarus it was 
not for the sake of asking His Father to raise Lazarus, but 
an audible expression of His intimate fellowship with the 
Father. He had witnessed to His Sonship, that He is 
one with the Father, equal in all things with the Father. 
He spoke of doing the same works which the Father doeth. 
“For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth 
them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will’ (John 
v:21). In connection with one of these miracles He also 
manifested His Deity in forgiving sins (Matthew ix:11,12). 

In the second place His miracles are the evidences and 
credentials of His Messiahship. When John the Baptist 
was troubled with doubt in prison, and sent forth his disciples 


22 THE HEALING QUESTION 


to the Lord Jesus with the question “Art Thou He that 
should come, or do we look for another?” the Lord said 
“Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and 
see. ‘The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised, and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them” 
(Matthew xi:1-6). The kingdom promised to Israel should 
' bring, according to the prophetic testimony in the Old 
Testament, the healing of the blind, the lame and the deaf 
(Isaiah xxxv). The inhabitant of the kingdom would no 
longer have to say “I am sick” (Isaiah xxxiii;24). The 
King had therefore to evidence His Messianic claims by 
these powers of the kingdom. The Jews ask for a sign 
(1 Corinthians 1:22). They want to see before they believe. 
The message of the Messiah concerning the kingdom had 
to be accompanied by miracles of healing. This is the reason 
why the Lord sent forth His disciples and conferred upon 
them His own divine power, to heal the sick, cleanse the 
lepers, to drive out demons and even to raise the dead. 
But this commission was for that time exclusively. It is 
an important fact, pointed out before, that in the Gospel 
of Matthew, the Gospel of the King and His Kingdom, 
is divinely arranged in such a way so as to show how the 
Lord Jesus, as the promised Messiah, the Son of David, 
offered the kingdom first of all. It had to be thus, for He 
had to be rejected as the King by the people. The great 
majority of miracles of healing are recorded in the first 
twelve chapters of that Gospel and are connected with the 
message, “‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 

In the third place in these miracles of healing the Son of 
God, the Messiah and King of Israel, besides manifesting 
His divine power and evidencing His Messiahship, also 
foreshadowed what the blessings of the kingdom will be 


THE HEALING QUESTION 23 


when the prayer is answered, ““Thy kingdom come,” by the 
return of the Lord Jesus Christ to receive that kingdom 
from the Father’s hands. As we have seen, sickness, pain 
and death are in the world on account of sin. It is part 
of the curse which rests upon man; all creation groans 
likewise under that curse and has shared in man’s ruin. 
But Christ in His blessed sacrificial death bore that curse. 
The crown of thorns is symbolical of it. In order that His 
redemption might be shown to be a perfect redemption, 
the curse of sin, disease and death, the curse as it rests 
upon ‘all creation, must some ae be removed. When 
He comes again ae all things are put under His feet, that 
time of blessing and glory will be reached. If in the days 
of His humiliation diseases, infirmities, demon powers 
and the power of death were completely overthrown by 
His Word and power, how much greater will be the victory 
in the day of His glorious manifestation! 

The dispensational aspect of some of the miracles of our 
Lord is indicated, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, 
in the peculiar arrangement. We just hint atit.* Matthew 
did not write his Gospel in a chronological way. Therefore 
he massed miracles together under the guiding hand of 
the Spirit of God, as if they had followed one the other. 
But it was done for a specific purpose. We take the eighth 
chapter. ‘The leper is cleansed first. He touched him and 
healed him instantaneously. He represents typically the 
nation Israel. He came to heal them of spiritual leprosy. 
In the silence of the priest to whom the cleansed leper showed 
himself, we see the fact that Israel did not respond to the 
purpose of the King. ‘Then a centurion, a Roman, ap- 
proached Him. He believes and his suffering servant is 


*Our “Gospel of Matthew,” a complete exposition in two volumes 
of over 600 pages, gives the details of this interesting arrangement, 


24 THE HEALING QUESTION 


healed without the Lord going to him in person and touching 
him. ‘Then the Lord said, ‘‘I have not found so great faith, 
no, not in Israel.” Upon this He announced the casting 
out of the children of the kingdom (Israel) and the coming 
in of the Gentiles from the east and the west, receiving the 
covenant blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Who 
fails to see in this the present age in which Israel is set aside 
and the Gospel goes forth to the Gentiles? Then He 
entered a house next; Peter’s mother-in-law is sick with a 
fever. He touched her. She arose and began to minister 
untothem. Here is a picture of what will happen some day, 
when the Lord will heal Israel of her sin-sickness and restless- 
ness. Israel is represented by the Prophets as a sick woman. ~ 
When He comes again He will touch Israel with His healing 
touch and Israel will be raised up to minister. Then 
follows immediately the healing of all. Not one was sent 
away disappointed, nor is there a word said about conditions 
of healing. ‘‘He healed all that were sick.” This will be 
the case after Israel is converted and restored. 

Equally striking is the dispensational aspect of Matthew 
ix:18-26. A ruler, a Jew, requests the Lord to come and to 
raise up his daughter, who was at the point of death, in 
the eyes of her father as good as dead. On the way to raise 
her, she passed away. But while He continues in the road 
to raise her up another miracle happens. The woman 
with the issue of blood touched Him and is healed. Then 
He proceeds and raises the dead daughter of the ruler to 
life. The ruler’s daughter, about to die, is another pro- 
phetic type of Israel, the daughter of Zion. She dies 
nationally and spiritually, but the Lord is on His way to 
raise her up. ‘The woman who touched Him and was healed 
represents typically the Gentiles who believe on Him, who 
touch Him in faith. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 25 


Then again in Chapter xiv, in the closing verses, we see 
in the ship filled with disciples, battling with the waves, 
the wind contrary, a picture of His own during this age. 
It was night, as it is also night now. But in the fourth 
watch of the night, when the day was about to dawn, He 
came walking across the stormy sea. Peter went forth 
to meet Him. Beginning to sink, the Lord saved him, 
and when they came to the ship the wind ceased. He is 
worshipped as the Son of God. After this there was another 
great demonstration of His healing power. Here too we 
see foreshadowed the present age and what will follow 
when He comes. In the fifteenth chapter, after He had 
healed the daughter of the Syro-Phenician mother, a Gentile, 
great multitudes came to be healed. The great multitudes 
healed after the Gentile had been delivered, foreshadow 
once more the blessings of the coming kingdom. 

In the fourth place the miracles of our Lord, besides 
bringing untold physical blessings to those who were healed, 
illustrate the ruin of sin, the condition of Jew and Gentile 
by nature, and His power to deliver from these spiritual 
diseases. Leprosy shows typically the loathsomeness of 
sin and its terrible defilement, excluding from the presence 
of God. Blindness illustrates the blind condition in which 
the natural man is, blind to every spiritual truth; and 
paralysis illustrates the helplessness of the sinner to do 
anything for himself, he can neither stand nor walk. Deaf- 
ness shows spiritual inability to hear, and dumbness 
inability to praise his God; the withered arm is the type of 
the natural man’s inability to work and serve. Fever is 
typical of the restlessness of sin and the burning thirst of 
the soul. The woman bowed down with a spirit of infirmity, 
always forced to look downward and not heavenward, 
illustrates the fact that sin crushes and bows down the crea- 


26 THE HEALING QUESTION 


ture destined to be in fellowship with God. And death is 
the picture of the spiritual death in which man is by nature, 
and the eternal death, separation for ever and ever from God. 
Our Lord meeting all these physical conditions showed that 
He has the power to meet also the spiritual needs of His 
lost creature. 

Before we leave this subject we point out a few other 
facts. Nowhere did our Lord make healing the leading 
feature of His ministry. He did not use His power to heal 
to gain fame, but He discouraged in every way the publicity 
of what He had done. There was not a certain class of the 
sick which he singled out and healed, and others who were 
sick that He did not heal, but sent them away still suffer- 
ing and disappointed. No! He healed them all. He did 
not appoint certain healing meetings, nor certain times of 
the day, nor did He ask for certain preparations, but He 
healed at any time and wherever the sick appealed to Him. 
There were no outward phenomena connected with His 
miracles of healing, such as falling down and becoming 
unconscious, or “‘the gift of tongues,” which the Lord never 
mentioned nor promised to His disciples; nor were there 
convulsions or fits. The convulsions, falling down to the 
ground, foaming at the mouth, were the evidences of demon 
power. When He healed there was instantaneous delivery; 
no need of waiting days and weeks, nor was there a gradual 
cessation of the fever and the symptoms. We mention 
these facts to show later the great contrast which exists be- 
tween the miracles of our Lord and those of the present day 
men and women who make the claims of continuing His 
ministry. 


CHAPTER III 
Miracles ot Healing in the Book of Acts 


The Book of Acts records the beginning of the Church 
on earth, which took place on the Day of Pentecost when 
the promised Holy Spirit was poured upon the assembled 
believers. The first part of this great historical record is 
filled with the miraculous. With the coming of the Holy 
Spirit there were miraculous outward signs, a miraculous 
gift of praise in different tongues, miraculous deliverances 
by the visible ministry of angels, miraculous judgments, 
like the instantaneous death of Ananias and his wife, as 
well as the smiting of blasphemous Herod by an angel. 
There were visions of glory, mysterious transportation, as 
in the case of Philip, who was snatched away. There were 
also true prophets who had the spirit of prophecy and pre- 
dicted the future, like Agabus. There were miracles of 
healing; the sick were healed and the dead were raised, as 
in the days our Lord was on earth. We confine ourselves 
to the records of these miracles of healing, and as we did 
in the previous chapter we shall quote them first. 

Acts iti:1-11. This is the first miracle of healing in the 
Book of Acts. The Church had been formed. By the one 
Spirit given on the great Day of Pentecost, they had 
been baptized into the one body. On that day no miracles 
of healing were performed, nor is there any mention made 
that the gathered company had such supernatural mani- 
festations in their midst. It was some time after Pentecost 
that the first miracle of healing took place. We leave it to 
the reader to peruse the text. The helpless beggar, lame 
from his mother’s womb, expected nothing but alms from 


27 


23 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Peter and John as they entered the temple gate. Nothing 
could be further from his thoughts than the expectation 
that these two unassuming Jews, fishermen of Galilee, 
would give him perfect health. Peter did not tell him that 
if he would believe that the Jesus who had been crucified, 
is the Christ, that if he believed that He is “‘the same yester- 
day, today and forever” and yielded himself to Him, he would 
be cured by believing. Peter did not give the lame man any 
kind of a message. For all we know the lame man was 
entirely ignorant of the fact that these two men were fol- 
lowers and disciples of Christ. The lame man was daily 
at the gate. Through that gate our Lord must have passed 
frequently. Perhaps he heard from others, this is the great 
Prophet and worker of miracles who heals the people. May 
he not have heard that an afflicted one like himself had been 
healed at the pool of Bethesda? We do not know. But 
this fact remains, no message that Christ could heal him 
was given, nor was there an appeal made to him that he 
should believe. Peter said, ‘In the name of Jesus of Naz- 
areth, rise up and walk.” Then Peter “took him by the 
right hand, and lifted him up, and immediately his feet 
and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up 
stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, 
Sane and (aide: and praising God.” 

This miracle is almost a duplicate of the miracle 
of the lame man healed by our Lord, and recorded 
in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John. Here let us call 
attention to a fact which has been frequently, if not alto- 
gether, overlooked. The risen Christ did not perform a 
single miracle of healing. He could have done so. He | 
might have stepped in His glorified human body, showing 
still the nail prints and the pierced side, into some public 
place and called to the sick and afflicted to come to Him, 


THE HEALING QUESTION 29 


so that He might prove that He is “the same yesterday, 
today and forever.” He did not. Neither did He appear 
to any unbeliever. The healing of the lame man by Peter 
using the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth gives us an 
important lesson which will be pointed out in this chapter 
after the examination of the other miracles of healing. 

The miracles could not be denied. Even their enemies 
had to say “that indeed a notable miracle hath been done 
by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; 
and we cannot deny it.” (Acts iv:16). 

After the supernatural judgment of lying Ananias and 
Sapphira there followed another demonstration of miraculous 
healing. 

Acts v:15-16. ‘“They brought forth the sick into the 
streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at least 
the shadow of Peter passing might overshadow some of 
them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round 
about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which 
were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were healed every 
one.” 

We must not read more into this passage than what it 
probably means. It does not say that the shadow of Peter 
falling upon the sick healed them of diseases. Probably 
it did. God can heal even through a shadow as an instru- 
ment, or through no instrument at all. The people were 
so very eager to be healed, and looked upon Peter as a great 
man o: God, that they expressed their desire by believing 
that Peter’s shadow would be beneficial. As far as we know 
the so-called “miracle men” and “miracle women’ who 
claim divine healing powers have not yet tried their shadows, 
nor have their dupes taken refuge under their shadow. But 
a multitude was healed who gathered in Jerusalem from 
the surrounding towns. Their sick and those vexed with 


30 THE HEALING QUESTION 


unclean spirits were all healed. There was not a single 
failure. 

Acts vt:8, Miracles and wonders are mentioned here. 
But we do not know if Stephen did miracles of healing. 

Acts viti:1-7. Philip was not an Apostle, but one of the 
deacons of the Church in Jerusalem (Acts vi:5). The 
Church having been broken up, Philip went down to Samaria 
and preached Christ unto them. The Holy Spirit mani- 
fested His power through this message and through Philip. 
The Samaritans saw the miracles which he did. Here we 
are told what miracles they were. ‘For unclean spirits, 
crying with loud voice, came out of many that were pos- 
sessed, and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, 
were healed.” 

Acts ix:32-43. Peter performed two miracles in the name 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. A victim of the palsy for eight 
years. There is not a word said that Aeneas had appealed 
to Peter to heal him. Nor was there any preaching done. 
Peter led by the Spirit, addressed the sufferer and said, 
“Jesus Christ maketh thee whole. Arise and make thy 
bed!’ The cure was instantaneous. Dorcas had died. 
Peter spoke the word, “Tabitha - Arise!’ ‘Then we read, 
“she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. 
And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up, and when he 
had called the saints (the believers) and widows, presented 
her alive.” 

Acts xiv:3. Signs and wonders were done by the hands 
of the Apostles in Iconium. ‘Though it is not stated, miracles 
of healing were probably among these signs. 

Acts xiv: 8-10. At Lystra a cripple, who had never 
walked in his life, was noticed by Paul, and in some way 
Paul noticed that he had faith to be healed. This faith 
came by hearing, for Paul preached the Gospel. Paul then 


THE HEALING QUESTION 31 


commanded him to stand upright, and he leaped and walked. 

Acts xvi:16-18. A demon-possessed damsel is healed by 
the Apostle Paul. He said, ‘I command thee in the name 
of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” The demon left the 
girl the same hour. ‘The case is an illustration of the fact 
that there are demons which speak the truth, and are not, 
like others, lying spirits. 

Acts xix:11-12. “And God wrought special miracles by 
the hands of Paul. So that from his body were brought 
unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases 
departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.” 
The meaning of these special miracles mentioned here, 
and the foolish attempt to reproduce them in the Church 
today, follows later in this chapter. 

Acts xx:9-12. Eutychus was killed by a fall from a 
window. Paul went down and embraced him. “And they 
brought the young man alive, and were not a little com- 
forted.” 

Acts xxvii1:8-9, Paul healed by the laying on of hands 
the father of a Roman, by the name of Publius, from fever 
and a bloody flux. Then other inhabitants of the island 
Melita who had diseases came and were healed. Here ends 
the story of the miracles of healing in the Book of Acts. 


The Meaning of the Miracles of Healing in the Acts 


The Book of Acts begins with Jerusalem and ends with 
the greatest Apostle as a prisoner in Rome. ‘The Book be- 
gins with many supernatural manifestations, including the 
miracles of healing, but gradually these manifestations be- 
come less and less, and the end of the Book sees them en- 
tirely gone. 

In the first place miracles of healing are so prominent in 
the beginning of this book because the Gospel was preached 


32 THE HEALING QUESTION 


in Jerusalem, and only Jews were addressed. Strictly speak- 
ing the message was to the Jews to repent; it was a repeated 
message, the same the Lord had preached (Acts iii:19-21). 
The Lord was still waiting for their repentance. ‘To con- 
vict the Jews and leave them without excuse, the preach- 
ing was backed “both with signs and wonders, and with 
divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to 
His own will’ (Hebrews 11:4). God willed it to be so. 

In the second place these miracles of healing are prominent 
in the beginning of Acts to witness to the fact that the Christ, 
who was crucified, is living at the right hand of God, as 
taught and preached by His witnesses, the Apostles. The 
healing of the lame man at the temple gate, healed in the 
name of Jesus Christ, showed that He who had healed the 
impotent man at the pool of Bethesda is the living Christ 
and has the same power to heal. All these miracles done 
by the Apostles in Jerusalem were renewed evidences to 
the Jews that He is the Son of God, the Messiah, the King, 
the Lamb of God, the Sin-bearer who died, who was buried, 
who rose from among the dead on the third day and who is 
gone to heaven and sits at the right hand of God. 

In the third place the miracles in the first part of the Book 
of Acts happened in fulfillment of His own words addressed, 
not to the Church, but to His disciples. We read in Mark 
xvi:17,18: “‘And these signs shall follow them that believe; 
In my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak 
with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they 
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall 
lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” In John 
xvi:12 He said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that be- 
lieveth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and 
greater works than these shall he do, because I go to my 
Father.’ What the greater works are is explained in an- 


THE HEALING QUESTION 33 


other chapter. When He spoke of the works He had done, 
which the disciples should do also, He meant the works of 
healing. The fulfillment came after His return to the 
Father. The sick and diseased were healed; demons were 
driven out and the dead were raised. ‘Though Paul did 
not hear Him speak the words in the closing verses of Mark’s 
Gospel, yet he experienced the truth of His promise when a 
serpent bit him and did him no harm (Acts xxviii). Mark 
xvi:17-18 is taken up in detail in another chapter. The 
promise given there does not extend beyond the Apostles. 

In the fourth place the miracles of healing, as well as others, 
were essential in the beginning of a new dispensation, and 
equally essential for the introduction of Christianity among 
the Gentiles. The Apostles proclaimed a_ supernatural 
message, concerning a supernatural person. The super- 
natural can only be proved by the supernatural. If the 
supernatural is ruled out of Christianity, if it is stripped of 
its supernatural origin and the supernatural evidences of 
its beginning, then it ceases to be Christianity. Without 
miracles Christianity is absolutely worthless. For this 
reason these miracles took place not only in Jerusalem in 
the beginning, but also in different parts of the Gentile 
world. The message of Christianity, as preached by the 
Apostles, was demonstrated to be a message from God by 
the miracles and signs which took place. But after the mes-: 
sage manifested its supernatural power in the conversion 
and transformation of thousands of lives, and after the full 
revelation of the Truth of God had been communicated in 
what we call the New Testament, outward signs, miracles 
of healing, as well as others were no longer needed and there- 
fore ceased. We must remember that when the recorded 
miracles happened in Jerusalem not a single book of our 
New Testament was in existence, and the greatest revela- 


34 THE HEALING QUESTION 


tions which God gave to man were penned by the prisoner 
of the Lord in Rome, the Apostle Paul, after the Gospel 
had been introduced by him in a good part of the known 
world of his times. 

It is highly significant that the beginning of the Book of 
Acts is filled with the miraculous, but after we leave Jeru- 
salem, Judea and Samaria behind, the miracles of healing 
decrease. To this we might add that in many places the 
Apostle Paul and his companions visited no miracles of 
healing, nor any other miracles are recorded. 

As is well known, Roman Catholicism believes that the 
power of working miracles was given by Christ to His 
Church, and that it never has and never will be withdrawn. 
Much of the superstition of Rome, as to miraculous healing 
and other miracles, in connection with relics, garments of 
saints and similar objects, is founded upon miracles recorded 
in the Book of Acts. Romanists point to Acts xix:12 as 
sanctioning of wearing articles ‘‘blessed’’ for healing and 
protection. But what shall we say when we find the same 
invention today among a certain class of Christians? ‘There 
is a certain Baptist Church in which weekly meetings are 
held, handkerchiefs are blessed and sent to the sick. The 
pastor has no sympathy with it, yet he does not want to in- 
terfere. Christians who think that the Lord will continue 
to heal divers diseases through handkerchiefs (though 
nothing is said about “blessing’’) overlook the fact that 
these miracles were special miracles, at a special time 
(Verse 11). ; 

Paul was in the midst of a very wicked city, filled with 
superstitions, with sorcerers and others who manifested 
Satan’s power. A signal manifestation of the power of 
God was needed to counteract these wicked demonstra- 
tions. God granted such a manifestation in the manner 


THE HEALING QUESTION 35 


recorded in the above text. To make use of handker- 
chiefs, today, as “divine healers’”’ do, is a foolish invention, 
akin to Romish superstitions and practices. 


CHAPTER IV 
What the Epistles Teach as to Physical Healing 


The Epistles of the New Testament were written by the 
inspired pens of the Apostles Paul, Peter, John, James 
and the servant of Jesus Christ, Jude, who was not an 
Apostle. The Pauline Epistles contain the fullest revela- 
tion of the Truth of God. The highest of all revelation is 
found in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. 
Paul also is the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The 
Epistles of Peter, John, James and Jude are known as the 
General Epistles. We shall take up each Epistle separately 
and examine each to learn what they teach as to the healing 
of diseases. 

Before we do this we call attention to a very significant 
fact. Not one of the writers of these documents has anything 
to say about the miracles our Lord Jesus Christ performed 
while on earth. Not once are we reminded by the Holy 
Spirit that the Lord Jesus Christ healed all manner of dis- 
eases, that He healed miraculously and instantaneously 
those who were born blind, the deaf, the dumb, the lame, 
and all manner of diseases. Nor is there to be found a 
single promise which holds out the hope that, if the believer 
trusts the Lord, he will be exempt from diseases and infirm- 
ities; or that the Lord will continue to exercise His divine 
power in the same manner and degree as He did while on 
earth. Only once did the Apostle Peter refer to the healing 
of Christ while on earth (Acts x:38). Then only once is 
mention made in an Epistle of the miracles which happened 
in the beginning in Jerusalem. ‘The significance of this 
fact will be pointed out later in this chapter. 


36 


THE HEALING QUESTION 37 


We begin with the Epistle to the Romans. This Epistle 
unfolds the salvation of God. This salvation is threefold 
(1) salvation from the guilt of sin; (2) salvation from the 
power of sin, and (3) salvation from the presence of sin. 
The latter will come when the believer is with the Lord. 
This salvation is the result of the work of redemption which 
the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, procured when He 
died for our sins on the cross. This redemption includes 
the body of the believer, but that redemption does not 
come till the Lord comes and then changes “our body of 
humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious 
body” (Phil. iii:21). Now if it were true, as is claimed by 
“divine healers,” that Christ died for our bodily ills, just 
as He died for our spiritual ills, our sins, the Epistle to the 
Romans would be the Epistle in which this physical salva- 
tion should be revealed. In vain do we look for it. There 
is not a single verse upon which that invented theory that 
Christ died ‘‘for our sicknesses” and that “He bore our 
diseases as He bore our sins” could be built. The Epistle 
to the Romans makes it perfectly clear what the salvation 
of God is, and that it does not include “‘the healing of our 
diseases.” There is a passage in the eighth chapter which 
is misunderstood and misapplied to support the ‘“‘divine 
healing” theory. A later chapter will show the fallacy of 
such an interpretation (Romans viii:11). 

The First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Church, con- 
stituting the fellowship of the saints on earth, its place and 
testimony in the world; its order, membership, spiritual gifts 
and manifestations, discipline, and other instructions, are the 
truths mostly dealt with in this Epistle. The Epistle reveals 
the deplorable condition of the Corinthian Church. Sec- 
tarianism had its origin in Corinth. Gross immorality was 
being tolerated in their midst; law-suits were being submitted 


38 THE HEALING QUESTION 


by them to courts over which pagans presided. They had 
degraded the blessed memorial feast, the Lord’s supper, 
on account of which some had been judged by the Lord with 
illness, while others had died. There were other abuses 
besides. 

The chapter which interests us the most in connection with 
our study is the twelfth chapter, in which the gifts of the Spirit 
of God are enumerated. Among these gifts we find the 
gifts of healing and of working miracles. Nine gifts of the 
Spirit are given. They are the following: ‘The Word of 
Wisdom; the Word of Knowledge; Faith; the Gifts of Healing; 
the Working of Miracles; Prophecy; Discerning of Spirits; 
Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues.” Foremost are the 
gifts needed for the edification of the Body, the Church of 
Jesus Christ, gifts which supply the spiritual need of the 
members of that Body. In the secondary place we have the 
gifts which are called “sign gifts,’ and they are given not 
for those who believe, but to them that believe not (I Corin- 
thians xiv:22). These sign gifts possess an evidential 
character. They are “the gifts of healing, or working mir- 
acles, discerning the spirits, tongues and interpretation of 
tongues” They were the prominent gifts in connection with 
the preaching of the Gospel to the unbelieving Jews, “‘for the 
Jews require a sign.” ‘They were the signs in the beginning 
of Christianity, bearing witness to the supernatural character 
of the message proclaimed, and that at a time when the 
written Word of God, as we possess it now in the New Testa- 
ment, was in process of production. 

We read in this chapter that “God hath set some in the 
Church, first Aposties, secondly prophets, thirdly teach- 
ers.” ‘These are evidently the permanent gifts, as we shall 
find them mentioned again in the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
‘Then we read what comes after that, “miracles, then gifts of 


THE HEALING QUESTION 39 


healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues” (Verse 
28). But are these gifts bestowed upon all? “Are all Apos- 
tles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers 
of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak 
with tongues? Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the 
best gifts; and yet I show you a more excellent way”’ (Verses 
29-31). From this we learn that the Lord does not bestow 
all these gifts upon one individual; they are distributed as 
it pleases Him. Evidently the Corinthians in their puffed 
up condition had a selfish ambition to have all these gifts, 
especially those for outward manifestation. Therefore 
when persons claim, and especially if these persons 
are women, that they have the gift of wisdom and knowledge, 
the gift of faith, the gifts of healing, the gift of speaking 
in tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues, we have 
a perfect right to look upon their claims as spurious. They 
are contrary to the Word of God. The Spirit of God has 
commanded, “Let your women keep silence in the churches, 
for it is not permitted unto them to speak.” If therefore 
women claim, as they do today in Pentecostalism, to pos- 
ess the gift of teaching, the gift of speaking in tongues and 
the gift of interpretation of tongues, we can rest assured 
that it is a counterfeit manifestation. 

Nor is there any intimation whatever here, or elsewhere 
in the New Testament, that these sign gifts, the gifts of 
healing, of miracles, of tongues and their interpretation, 
were to be permanently present in the Body of Christ. 
There are evidences that show they were limited. The 
exercise of these gifts was never discretional. They were 
manifested only in their fitting season, and could only 
work effectually by the immediate will of God. Power 
belongs to Him and is always in His hands. In the next 
chapter we have the intimation that these special sign gifts 


40 THE HEALING QUESTION 


would cease (Chapter xili:8). In two other passages 
(Romans xii and Ephesians iv) we read of the gifts of the 
Spirit; in both passages the gifts of healings, of miracles 
and tongues, are omitted. 

It is interesting to note that while we have no record that 
a single miracle of healing ever took place in the Corinthian 
assembly, though we read that the signs of an Apostle were 
wrought among them by Paul. They had the gift of tongues 
and evidently misused it, so that the pen of the Apostle 
Paul had to caution against it. 

Nor is there a promise in the Word of God that these ex- 
traordinary gifts are to be restored to the Church before 
this age ends. The only signs and miracles mentioned in 
the end of the age are the lying signs and miracles of the 
Antichrist (2 Thessalonians ii). In the light of all this, 
anything which claims today the restoration of these sign 
gifts, a return to apostolic days, must be looked upon with 
grave suspicion. 

In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians we find no mention 
made of the gifts of healing. The second Epistle is more 
personal and less doctrinal than the first Epistle. There is 
much in this Epistle relating to the personal character of 
Paul. He defends his Apostolic authority, his motives 
and his ministry. But there is something in this Epistle 
which has a definite bearing upon the healing question. In 
this Epistle Paul speaks of the thorn in the flesh. We 
quote the text. “And lest I should be exalted above measure 
through the abundance of the revelations, there was given 
to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet 
me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing 
I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. 
And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for 
my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly 


THE HEALING QUESTION 41 


will J therefore rather glory in my infirmities, that the power 
of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians xii:7-9). The 
Apostle had great supernatural revelations with which the 
danger of self-exaltation was connected. To keep him 
humble and in the place of dependence, the Lord had per- 
mitted Satan to afflict him with the thorn in the flesh, just 
as He had permitted Satan to afflict Job. 

Many opinions have been expressed as to what the thorn 
in Paul’s flesh was. Some teach that it consisted in evil 
suggestions, thoughts of unbelief and blasphemy. Luther 
held this view. Others suggest remorse over his past life 
as the persecutor of the Church, or a form of melancholy. 
Destructive critics have invented a cunningly devised 
fable. ‘They say the thorn in the flesh consisted in a form 
of epilepsy, called by the Greeks “the holy disease.’ These 
fits put him into a trance, and it was such a spell that he 
had on the road to Damascus, when he imagined to have 
seen Christ. How utterly absurd! Roman _ interpreters 
find in the thorn a precedent for the stories of the monkish 
temptations - incitements to lust. 

The thorn in the flesh was unquestionably a physical 
and very painful affliction. The malady was not only ex- 
tremely painful but it also humilated him in the presence of 
those to whom he ministered (2 Corinthians x:10). We are 
not left in doubt about the nature of this bodily affliction. 
He suffered from a serious and very painful eye-disease. 
That he had weak eyes may be learned from the fact that 
he did not write the Epistles with his own hand but employed 
an amanuensis. Only one Epistle he wrote himself, and 
he did so writing to the Galatians in large letters (Galatians 
vi:ll). Acts xxiii:1-4 shows that he was nearsighted. The 
Galatians had pity for him in his affliction and were ready 
to pluck out their own eyes, and give them to him (Gala- 


42 THE HEALING QUESTION 


tians iv:15). An ancient description of Paul, dating back 
to the second century, mentions the fact that his eyes were 
inflamed; the genuineness of the tradition cannot reasonably 
be doubted. He suffered from that painful disease ophthal- 
mia, which is still prevalent in the Orient. The word 
“infirmity” means sickness. Then he prayed thrice to 
be delivered from this disease. He prayed for healing; 
but as far as healing is concerned there was no answer. 
But the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” 
This means, in other words, “It is better for you, Paul, to 
suffer this affliction than to be delivered from it.” It was 
the will of the Lord that this physical ill should remain 
upon him, 

This case of Paul’s affliction disposes completely of that 
vicious teaching that the reason why true Christians who 
are sick suffer and are not healed, is because they have not 
sufficient faith to be healed. Or as one, Bosworth, puts it, 
the lack of “discerning the Lord’s body.” Of this, more 
later. 

We find nothing in the Epistle to the Galatians which 1s 
related to the question before us. Only once in this Apostolic 
defense of the Gospel is the word ‘“‘miracles” used, and then 
only incidentally, without any explanation what miracles 
they were (Galatians iii:5). 

The Epistle to the Ephesians is the culmination of God’s 
revelation to man. It is the high-watermark of all revela- 
tion. In this great Epistle the glory of the Body of Christ 
and the Bride of Christ is wonderfully unfolded. ‘The 
Church is the fullness of Him, who filleth all in all. It is 
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, 
Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Cornerstone, in whom 
all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy 
temple of the Lord (ii:21). Here we are told that Christ 


THE HEALING QUESTION 43 


loved the Church and gave Himself for it. Here is the 
precious revelation that we are members of His Body, His 
flesh and His bones. But where in this Epistle of the most 
glorious Old and New Testament revelation do we find a 
single statement, like those constantly used among the ad- 
vocates of “‘divine healing,’ that Christ died for our sick- 
nesses; that the Church must heal the physically sick? 
Where in this Epistle or any other Epistle is even the faintest 
suggestion of healing meetings, in which the sick present 
themselves for a demonstration in public that Christ can 
heal the sick? Where? There is not even a hint. 

We call attention to chapter iv:11-14. The Apostle speaks 
of the gifts which the Lord has given to His Body, the Church. 
These are of course the same as the gifts of the Spirit in 
1 Corinthians xii. Here we read of the gifts necessary for 
the “perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, 
for the edifying of the Body of Christ (the Church). Here 
we have the gifts which are permanent, till the state of per- 
fection is reached (Verse 13). Paul speaks of the Apostles 
(their doctrine), of Prophets, those who tell forth the Truth 
of God, of Evangelists who go forth to preach the Gospel 
to the unsaved; the Pastor and Teacher, who follows the 
Evangelist to shepherd the flock and teach them the Word. 
These ministers possess the gifts of wisdom and knowl- 
edge of 1 Corinthians xii. But there is no mention made 
here of the sign gifts. Not a word of the gifts of healing, of 
miracles, not a single word about speaking in tongues. Why 
not? Because these sign gifts were for the beginning of the 
Church, but are not needed for the completion of the Church, 
nor for the edification of that Body. When God revealed all 
He means to reveal, sight and signs end and “we walk by 
faith and not by sight.” 

In the sister Epistle to Ephesians, that is Colossians, noth- 


44 THE HEALING QUESTION 


ing is found which has any bearing whatever on the healing 
of the body of the believer. But we call attention to the 
following. Here we have the glory of the Head of the Body. 
He is revealed in the glory of His Deity and the glory of His 
work is beautifully unfolded. Here we read of the peace 
which was made in the blood of the Cross; of the reconcilia- 
tion which has been effected; of the blotting out of the hand- 
writing of ordinances, which was against us; of His triumph 
over principalities and powers. We read of what the believer 
has in Christ, that he is perfect and complete in Him. But 
why do we not read in this magnificent testimony to the 
Person and work of Christ, that He also died for our diseases, 
that He bore our diseases in His body on the cross in the same 
manner as He bore our sins? Why is there nothing said 
about healing in this next greatest Epistle of the New Testa- 
ment? ‘The answer is simple. The teaching that Christ 
died for our diseases as He died for our sins is a human inven- 
tion, and not a Bible doctrine. Nor is there a word said in 
this Epistle, nor in any other Epistle about “divine healing,” 
a term which is nowhere used by the Holy Spirit. Why not? 
Because “divine healers” are self-appointed and not God- 
appointed. 

We turn to Philippians. ‘This is the Epistle of true Chris- 
tian experience. Surely here we are going to find faith- 
healing and the assertion that a Christian when sick will be 
speedily healed and fully restored, and if he is not, it is an 
evidence that he is not right with God and lacks true Chris- 
tian experience, as “divine healers’ teach up and down the 
land. Again we are disappointed in our expectation. Nota 
word of all this is found anywhere in this Epistle of true 
Christian experience. But there is something in the Philip- 
pian Epistle which deals the whole system of “‘faith healing” 
an almost fatal blow. The Philippians sent a messenger to 


THE HEALING QUESTION 45 


Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, in Rome. He did not only 
bring their greetings but brought financial fellowship to the 
beloved Apostle. He came to Rome a very sick man; yea, 
he was sick nigh unto death. From this we conclude that it 
was a very serious illness which ran its course. The Apostle 
states that God had mercy on him. He recovered and got 
well. ‘There is not a word said about a miracle of healing 
being performed. Epaphroditus exemplifies self-forgetful- 
ness. In his zeal for God he did not regard his life, and for the 
work of Christ he was nigh unto death (Phil. ii:25-30). It 
shows how a true believer, an earnest self-sacrificing servant 
of the Lord, can be sick unto death, and then be restored to 
health, not by some “divine healer’ anointing him with oil, 
but by the mercy of God, in whose hands all His servants are. 
According to the teaching of these modern healers the story 
of Epaphroditus should read this way, “He was sick nigh unto 
death; but Paul produced a bottle of oil, anointed him, 
the power came upon him, and he arose perfectly well.” 

In the two Epistles to the Thessalonians nothing is said 
about physical healing. The Thessalonian Church was a 
model Church. But they had no healing manifestations 
whatever in their midst. Paul spent three weeks in that city, 
preached the Gospel and instructed them in prophecy con- 
cerning the future (2 Thessalonians 11:5). Yet not a word 
about ‘‘divine healing.’’ In the second Epistle there is a 
warning that when the end of the age is reached signs and 
lying wonders are to be manifested by the counterfeiting 
power of Satan. 

In the first Epistle to Timothy we discover two passages 
which demand attention in connection with our question. 
In chapter ii:15 we have the promise, “‘Notwithstanding, she 
shall be saved in child-bearing; if they continue in faith and 
charity and‘ holiness with sobriety.” 


46 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Divine healers assume, on account of this passage of 
Scripture, that every Christian woman, if she and her hus- 
band meet the conditions of the text, will always be brought 
safely through the perils of child-bearing. If this be true 
will some one explain the following: Hundreds of thousands 
of women, who make either an empty Christian profession, 
or are worldly, indifferent, and ungodly in every way, pass 
through the travail of childbirth in perfect safety. On the 
other hand there are many godly women, living saintly 
lives, and their husbands are equally devoted, continuing 
in faith and charity and holiness, just as the text demands, 
and these women are taken away by death. If the text 
means, as faith-healers teach, deliverance from physical 
death in child-bearing, then the thousands of worldly, 
pleasure-loving women who pass safely through the ordeal 
have God’s mark of approval on their ungodly walk, while 
the godly women, wives of godly husbands, whose life and 
walk is above reproach, perfectly pleasing to God, are con- 
demned in their life and walk of godliness. The fact is that 
the text does not promise any such deliverance from physical 
death in child bearing. 

In the first place the Greek is not “‘ En,” in childbearing, 
but it is “‘Dza,”’ through childbearing. The question is 
what do we understand by the word “saved”? Every 
believer knows that this word has different meanings in 
Scripture. In chapter iv:16 of the same Epistle we read, 
“‘Give heed to thyself and to the teaching, continue in them, 
for doing this, thou shalt both save thyself and those that 
hear thee.” That the word saved here cannot mean salva- 
tion from sin and eternal judgment is clear enough. Nor 
could it mean salvation in the temporary sense of the 
word, from physical dangers, from sickness or death. What 
then does it mean? ‘Timothy had received a gift. The 


THE HEALING QUESTION 47 


exercise of this gift was the path of salvation in which he 
was to walk. In order to have the Lord’s continual approval 
and favor, he must continue in teaching, not shirking the 
responsibility connected with it, but bear it—in season and 
out of season, preaching the Word. In this way he would 
save himself from disapproval and not pleasing in His sight. 

And ‘so it is with the Christian woman’s salvation. Her 
calling is not of a public nature, as Timothy’s public min- 
istry, but in domestic duties. She is called to bear children 
and rear them in the fear of the Lord. This is the path of 
her salvation, marked out for her, and as she continues in 
it with love and faith and holiness with sobriety, she has 
God’s approval in it. It has nothing whatever to do with 
exemption from death in childbearing. If it meant that 
it would be a horrible nightmare for every Christian woman, 
filling with anticipative fears the hearts of believing women 
who approach motherhood, and if death occurs, as it so 
frequently does, it would send the husband into despair, 
for he might be the guilty party on account of whom judg- 
ment by physical death came upon the beloved wife. And 
the woman who died in childbearing would then have passed 
away as under the cloud of divine judgment. Such teaching 
as based upon this text by “healers” is not of God. 

The second passage is chapter v:23. ‘Drink no longer 
water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine 
often infirmities.” Timothy, the beloved spiritual son of 
Paul, the aged, had often infirmities. Will any one charge 
him with not having had faith for healing? Will any one 
say that he had sinned and lived not in the right way? Paul 
did not exhort him, as he should have done, according to 
the present teaching on healing—let some one anoint you 
with oil, lay hands on you, and the Lord will heal you from 
your often infirmities. Nor did he even tell him to pray to 


48 THE HEALING QUESTION 


the Lord for deliverance from the spells of sickness. He 
sent him a prescription. It was given by inspiration of God 
just as much as the eighth chapter in Romans. He told 
him to stop drinking water and to use a little wine. We 
have heard fanatics say that Paul made a mistake in writ- 
ing such a sentence. In this passage we have the divine 
sanction of means in case of infirmities. 

In the second Epistle there is the record of Trophimus. 
“Trophimus have I left sick at Miletum” (2 Timothy iv: 
20). His name appears in Acts xx:4 and xxi:29. For 
some reason he fell sick, and Paul had to leave him behind 
in Miletum. Why did not Paul call the elders and have 
a healing service at that time? Paul, who at Corinth and 
elsewhere wrought the signs of an Apostle, did not perform 
a miracle of healing on Trophimus. He left him sick. — 

As Paul has nothing to say about healing of diseases in 
his Epistles to Titus and Philemon, we pass on to the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. Paul is the author of this Epistle also. 
In this Epistle alone do we find a reference to the signs and 
miracles which were done in Jerusalem, after Pentecost, 
and while the Gospel was preached to the Jew first. This 
is found in chapter ii:4. The signs and wonders, the divers 
miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, by which God bore 
witness to the supernatural message of salvation preached 
by the Apostles, are the miracles recorded in the first part 
of the Book of Acts. But we do not find a promise made to 
the Hebrews to have faith, and experience, as a result of 
faith, a continuation of miracles and signs. All this bears 
out what we have stated before, that the miracles of healing 
and other miracles were, according to God’s plan, demon- 
Strations in the beginning in Jerusalem. 

In the Epistle of James we find a passage of great impor- 
tance, one of the most misunderstood passages in the New 


THE HEALING QUESTION 49 


Testament, which is the star text for all “divine healers.” 
In another chapter a number of pages are devoted to an 
analysis and interpretation of this passage, (James v:14). 

Neither the Epistles of Peter, John, nor Jude have any- 
thing to say about healing of diseases, faith healing or gifts 
of healing. 

We do well to restate what we have found in our exegetical 
investigation of the Epistles as to the healing question: 

1. Not one of the writers ever mentions the Lord Jesus 
Christ as having done miracles of healing, none even hints at 
the possibility that these miracles of healing should be in 
order during this dispensation, as they were when the Son of 
God was upon earth. : 

2. Only one Epistle, the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks 
of the signs and miracles which were wrought by the Lord 
through His Apostles in the beginning of the Church in 
Jerusalem. 

3. There is nowhere in these documents of our Christian 
faith a statement to be found that the Son of God died for 
our diseases as He died for our sins. There is no such thing 
taught in the New Testament as the “fourfold Gospel,” 
one of the phases being “Christ our Healer.” Where- 
ever the death of Christ is mentioned it is always and only 
in connection with our sins, and never are bodily ills and 
infirmities spoken of. 

4. The much used term “divine healer” is never used by 
an inspired writer of the New Testament. 

5. There are no indications that the Apostolic Churches, 
those among which the Apostles labored, ever held “healing 
meetings” or urged the people to bring the sick. 

6. Clear evidence is given that’ the? gifts of healing, or 
working miracles, of speaking in tongues and the interpre- 
tation of tongues, were not to remain permanently in the 


50 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Church. The fact that in the great Church Epistles, apart 
from First Corinthians, there is nothing said about the gifts 
of healing, and the further fact that in Romans and especially 
in Ephesians, the sign gifts are omitted, is our evidence for 
the cessation of these gifts. That these sign gifts still exist 
no one denies. But it has not pleased the Holy Spirit to 
continue the exercise of them. 

7. While there is a very prominent lack of teaching on the 
healing question in the leading Epistles, such as Romans, 
Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, the Petrine 
and Johanine Epistles, there is on the other hand much evi-_ 
dence that the gift of healing was not used by Paul toward. 
the end of his ministry, nor was there any anointing with oil, 
nor laying on of hands practiced. The Apostle Paul him- 
self was a sick man. He suffered bodily infirmity, and 
when the Lord had spoken and told him that it was His will 
that he should continue to have the thorn in the flesh, he 
gloried in his infirmity. Epaphroditus was sick nigh unto 
death. No miracle was wrought in his behalf, in a speedy, 
instantaneous cure. Timothy had often infirmities. The 
Lord permitted these infirmities to continue. There was 
no anointing service for Timothy, but a divinely given pre- 
scription of a remedy. ‘Trophimus was left behind sick by 
the Apostle Paul. 

8. The only place in the New Testament where we read of 
“anointing with oil” is in the Epistle of James, addressed 
to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, and not to the Church. 


CHAPTER: F 
Miracles of Healing in History 


The scope of our work forbids a closer examination of 
the beliefs current in the ancient world as to diseases and 
their cure. From the very beginning, as witnessed to by 
the most ancient records of the human race, humanity 
struggled with the question of bodily ills and how to over- 
come them. Lenormant, and other students of ancient 
Babylonian history, tell us that in the earliest cuneiform 
writings all diseases are looked upon as having been pro- 
~ duced by evil spirits. They had certain incantations and 
appeals to their gods for deliverance. The Acadian priests 
taught that by using certain magical words they could 
banish the hurtful evil spirits, and thus cure sickness. 

The Egyptians exalted magic against diseases into an 
art and used their great temples as hospitals. Patients 
were brought to the temples of Isis, after a prolonged pre- 
paration, consisting of baths, anointing with oil and massage; 
they were put into a hypnotic sleep by the use of soft music 
and the perfumes of incense. While in that condition 
either a cure was effected, as they claimed, or the proper 
remedy suggested. 

The ancient Aryan races had the same belief. In the 
Vedas and other Sanskrit works, many prayers for the sick 
are recorded. Buddhists and the Brahmins also had their 
magic spells. The Greek priests performed medical functions 
in the temples of Jupiter, Apollo and Juno. Many patients 
went to Pergamos, where a great temple stood with a famous 
medicinal spring near by. After certain preparations, and 
sacrifices being offered, various means were used to induce 
a hypnotic sleep, during which assurance of healing was 

51 


52 THE HEALING QUESTION 


given and a remedy suggested. Similar methods were 
used at the oracles at Delphi, whose entranced Pythoness 
devoted much attention to the cures of the ills of the human 
body. 

The ancient Druids had the reputation of curing 
diseases by supernatural powers. So famous were their 
cures that the Roman Emperor Aurelius consulted them in 
his own case. Many miraculous cures by these magical 
spells, through the use of oracles and other means, are re- 
corded in the annals of all these ancient nations. 

The same belief we find among the ancient Jews. The 
Talmud witnesses to this. They believed in demons of 
various kinds, who inhabited the air, the water, the food.* 
Some of these demons (Shedim) produced asthma, others 
were responsible for blindness, deafness, insanity; almost 
every disease had for its source a demon. Various methods 
were used, and when successful it was said “he or she had a 
demon cast out.”? The ancient Rabbis believed in the use 
of magic spells and practiced the exorcism of evil spirits 
(See Matthew xii:27). Josephus the Jewish historian records 
that Solomon used certain sacred words in conquering de- 
mon influences. Many Jews used incantations for the ex- 
pulsion of evil spirits and the healing of diseases. Con- 
nected with these magical words was the use of oil, the body 
being anointed and massaged. 

With these brief remarks we must turn to the history of 
the Church and trace the healing question during the past 
centuries. We have seen that as the full revelation was 
given by the Holy Spirit and the work of the Apostles was 
finished, miracles gradually disappeared. Dr. Hodge in 
his Systematic Theology says rightly, “when the Apostles 

*The washing of hands as demanded by the Pharisees, before eating, 


originated with the superstition that these demons can find their way 
into the human body through unwashed hands (See Matthew xv:1-13). 


THE HEALING QUESTION oe 


had finished their work, the necessity of miracles, so far as 
the great end they were intended to accomplish was con- 
cerned, ceased.”” This is the almost universal attitude of 
all outstanding Protestant teachers. One who has given 
much attention to research in patristic literature* assures 
us that during the first hundred years after the death of the 
Apostles we hear little or nothing of the working of miracles 
by the early Christians. He declares, “If we except the 
testimonies of Papias and Irenaeus, who speak of the raising 
of the dead, I can find no instance of miracles mentioned by 
the Fathers before the fourth century.”’ The testimony of 
Irenaeus in his treatise against heresies is as follows; “Yea, 
moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up, 
and remained among us for many years.” But it is very 
doubtful as to what time he refers. He was personally ac- 
quainted with the friend of the Apostle John, Polycarp, 
and he may have meant the miracles our Lord performed. 
Augustine and Chrysostom speak of the cures of diseases, 
particularly the cures of demoniacs, by exorcising them, 
which seems to have been the standing miracle in the fourth 
and fifth centuries. Even then the superstitious belief in 
relics was present. Augustine states in the beginning of the 
fifth century, of a certain relic, believed by him to have be- 
longed to martyred Stephen: “It is not two years since 
this relic has been at Hippo Regius, and accounts of many 
of the miracles performed by it have not been written, as 
it is most certainly known to us, yet the number of those 
which have been given, up to now amounts to seventy.” 
He also reports a most remarkable case of healing of a Car- 
thaginian by name of Innocentius. 

A few years afterwards in 430 Theodore of Mopsuete 
wrote: “Many heathen among us are being healed by 


*Bishop Douglas in “Criterion.” 


54 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Christians from whatever sickness they may have, so abun- 
dant are miracles in our midst.” 

Towards the second half of the second century a move- 
ment was set on foot which must be looked upon as the 
parent movement of similar ones throughout the history of 
the Church down to our own times. Montanus, a native 
of Mysia, about the year 157 gave himself out to be a prophet, 
maintaining that the office of a prophet had not come to an 
end in the New Testament. He spoke in a frenzied speech, 
which his enemies interpreted to mean demoniac posses- 
sion, but which he and his friends declared to be the inspira- 
tion of God and the revival of the gift of tongues. He him- 
self maintained that he was but a passive instrument re- 
peating the words which were put into his mouth. Two 
women, Prisca in 175, and Maximilla in 179, left their 
husbands to join him, and contributed not a little to the 
later extravagances of the movement, urging that it was 
now the era of the Spirit and that the Second Advent was 
at hand. One of the leading teachings was that Joel’s 
prophecy of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was now in 
reality fulfilled in Montanism. Along with it was the claim 
to heal the sick by the laying on of hands. The true Church 
of the second century looked upon the whole movement as 
being the work of demons. Two Church leaders tried to 
stop it by exorcising the demons in the two women leaders. 
It degenerated into a heretical movement; and its after 
history showed that it was the work of evil spirits. All the 
extravagant movements throughout the history of the Church 
in every century are anticipated in Montanism. In each 
movement there is a leader making the claim of being some 
great one, with prophetic gifts and a new revelation. Women 
are always prominent in these movements, taking a place 
in leadership which is denied them by the command of the 


THE HEALING QUESTION 55 


Holy Spirit. They claim direct inspiration, an outpouring 
of the Holy Spirit, a restoration of Apostolic gifts, especially 
the gift of tongues and the healing of the sick. 

The Pentecostal movement of our times belongs to this 
category. Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson, of Los Angeles, 
California, is in direct line with this movement. Like Mon- 
tanus she claims that ““This is that’ (Acts ii:16; Joel ii:28) is 
fulfilled in her movement; that another Pentecost has come. 
Like Montanus she claims direct inspiration of God. Per- 
haps Montanus did not go as far as she does, when she de- 
clares that at a certain time “‘my mouth was opened, the 
Lord took control of my tongue, my lips and vocal organs, 
and began to speak through me, not in tongues, but in 
English. The Spirit spoke in prophecy, and as He spoke 
through me I did not know what the next word was to be; 
certainly the water did flow, not from my head, but from the 
innermost depths of my being, without my having aught 
to do with it.’* This is but a sample of similar claims. 
She and other “healers” claim to have the gift of tongues 
and interpretation of tongues, and “healing services” are a 
. leading feature in their movements. Like the prophetesses 
of Montanus these modern women leaders have visions and 
dreams. 

Beginning with the middle of the fourth century the 
Church started on her long process of corruption in doctrine 
and practice. With this corruption the superstitiously- 
miraculous kept full step. From the fifth to the thirteenth 
century church history is filled with the records of startling 
miracles, miraculous manifestations and miraculous heal- 
ings. Roman Catholicism as it is today was then born. 
Roman Catholics relying with entire confidence on the 
promises of Christ, the same which Pentecostal healers, 


*“Lost and Restored.” By Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson. Page 5. 


56 THE HEALING QUESTION 


faith healers, Christian Scientists and others also quote 
(John xiv:12; Mark xvi: 17,18), believe that the power of 
working miracles, including miracles of healing, was given 
by Christ to His Church, and that it has never been and never 
will be withdrawn from her. Hence Rome backs up the super- 
stitions of the middle ages. Yet Cardinal Newman, a con- 
vert from the Church of England, made the following remarks 
on the difference between the miracles of the New Testament 
and the miracles of ecclesiastical history: “The miracles of 
Scripture are, as a whole, grave, simple, majestic; those of ec- 
clesiastical history often partake of what may not unfitly be 
called a romantic character, and of that wildness and 
inequality which enters into the notion of romance.” Dr. 
Philip Schaff points out that the monkish miracles of heal- 
ing and other miracles are not so much supernatural and 
above reason, as they are unnatural and against reason. 
They serve not to confirm the Christian faith, but for the 
most part support the ascetic life, the magical virtue of the 
sacrament, the veneration of saints and relics. “In most 
cases they were the work of deliberate imposture. Every 
church and monastery had its tutelar saint and every saint 
his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under 
his protection, by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, and 
consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally for 
patronage.”’* Hundreds of people made a good living by 
pretending to have some incurable disease, or claiming 
blindness, deafness and other ills; went to the grave of some 
“saint,” or to a church where relics were exposed. Then 
suddenly they professed the “healing power” and then re- 
ceived liberal contributions for the pretended miracle of 
healing which had been performed. Much of the miraculous 


*Hallam’s Middle Ages. Page 362, Vol. II. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 57 


healing during the dark ages was a fraus pia, a pious fraud. 
The religious fraud is the worst fraud which can be per- 
petrated upon the human race. The top-notch of the re- 
ligious fraud is when the suffering, the afflicted, the incura- 
able, are encouraged to expect a divine miracle on their 
behalf through the mediation of some miracle man or miracle 
woman. The fraus pia of the healing cults of today is 
appalling. 

In the sixth and seventh centuries we read of the use of 
consecrated oil on the sick. It was introduced to counteract 
the use of amulets and incantations in case of illness. Ina 
sermon preached by Caesarius of Arles we read: ““How much 
better, that mothers should hasten to the church, should 
receive the body and the blood of Christ, and anointing herself 
and hers in faith with the consecrated oil, obtain, according 
to the words of the Apostle James, not merely health of the 
body, but also forgiveness of sins.”* This unction was 
applied, in the first place in all cases of sickness, and was 
not yet, at that time, the Romish extreme unction of today. 

In the eighth century Bede advocated strongly the use of 
consecrated oil for the anointing of the sick. A provincial 
council met in the ninth century in Chalons, and here we 
find the statement made as to oil blessed by the Bishop: 
“This is the kind of medicine which should not be despised, 
which heals the infirmities of soul and body.” 

Hundreds of pages could be filled with the records of 
miracles, and fanatics which claimed the special powers of 
the Holy Spirit and the working of miracles. In the twelfth 
century the pious Bernard of Clairvaux had a widespread 
reputation of being a worker of miracles. Ina letter to Pope 
Eugene II, and in another letter to the citizens of ‘Toulouse, 


*Neander’s Church History. 


58 THE HEALING QUESTION 


he expressed his firm belief that God performed miracles 
through his hands. A monk by name of Gottfried claims 
to have been an eyewitness of the healing of a ten year old 
boy, who had lost the use of his limbs. Bernard touched 
him, made the sign of the cross, and told him to get up and 
walk. He did so at once. 

It would take a good sized volume to record the names of 
popes, priests, bishops and monks who are credited with 
having done miracles of healing throughout the dark ages. 
Bede reports that the monk St. Austin healed many of 
blindness. lLepers, paralytics, the deaf, the dumb, the blind 
and those who suffered from fevers and the plague were 
healed, according to the records of those days. Some were 
healed by touch, others by relics and other means. Martin 
of Tours is said to have cured a paralyzed girl, and a leper at 
the gates of Paris, the latter by kissing his lips. A letter 
written by St. Martin, the record says, was laid upon the 
chest of a fever stricken girl, and she was at once restored to 
health. In 1059 there lived in Upsala, Sweden, a heathen 
priest, who had become blind. This man had heard much 
about the power of the Christian’s God. As he had appealed 
in vain for help to his idols he decided to turn to Christ for 
relief. He said that he had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who 
promised him his sight should be restored if he would worship 
her Son. The priest was healed of his affliction and went 
about everywhere proclaiming the power of the God of the 
Christian, and the vanity of idols. | 

There were also the Camisards in the XVII Century, a 
fanatical sect which originated in a village called Dieu-le-fii in 
Dauphine. The delusion spread to Great Britain, where 
they were known as the French Prophets. ‘They claimed 
inspiration, just as Montanus, and all other delusionists 
down to our own times, claim direct inspiration. ‘They had 


THE HEALING QUESTION 59 


the gifts of prophecy, the gift of speaking in tongues and 
above all the gift of healing. What “faith-healers’’ do 
today was done by these Camisards. The whole movement 
was charged with the grossest immoralities; incests, adultery 
and fornication were widespread among them. “On the 
ethical side we are face to face with the vagaries in the vita 
sexualis which we will learn to look upon as an invariable 
associate of the tongues movement.”* This is very true. 
The same immoralities are found today among certain 
extreme holiness and gift of tongues sects. We would not 
dare give in these pages what has been brought to our atten- 
tion in various parts of our land. 

Every century had hundreds of miracles of various descrip- 
tions, including miracles of healing. We give a sample of 
one of the more modern miracles of healing, which happened 
in 1656. A collector of relics possessed a thorn, which he 
claimed was one of the original thorns of the crown of Christ. 
It was exhibited in the Port Royal Convent. A young lady, 
a niece of the famous Pascal, had been suffering for several 
years from a malignant growth, which had affected the bones 
of her nose and palate. As she with others examined the 
thorn, one of the instructors said to her, ““Recommend your- 
self to God, my child, and touch your diseased face with the 
holy thorn.” She did so and that night was completely 
healed. The healing took place when the controversy be- 
tween the Jansenists and the Jesuits was raging, and as the 
girl was related to the leading Jansenist, Pascal, the Jesuits 
did everything to discredit the miracle. The Archbisho 
and the doctors of the Sorbonne investigated and were forced 
to admit that the cure was supernatural. Later thousands 
visited the grave of the Abbe Paris, a zealous Jansenist 
leader during the XVIII century, and claimed to be healed of 


*“The Gift of Tongues,” by A. Mackie, page 80. 


60 THE HEALING QUESTION 


cancer, blindness, paralysis, dropsy and other diseases, 
Many of these cases were investigated by physicians of note 
and pronounced genuine. 

Then there is the famous miracle grotto of Lourdes, where, 
according to a poor girl, the Virgin Mary had appeared to her 
in 1858. Between twenty-five and thirty-five thousand 
sufferers and more visit the shrine every year, and many 
miraculous cures, it is claimed, have taken place. ‘There 
are many similar shrines throughout Europe, besides one on 
our continent, Ste. Anne de Beau-Pre in Quebec, where also, 
it is said, miraculous cures are worked. 

When the writer visited Russia a good many years ago, a 
Greek monk took him through the catacombs of the Lawra 
Monastery in Kieff. He showed us the different graves and 
relics, and later in the yard of the monastery pointed out a 
small hill of crutches, surgical bandages and other appliances, 
that were thrown away by the pilgrims who came from near 
and wide with their diseases and were healed by the relics 
and the bones of the saints. 

Another curious healing in the XVII century was byt he 
King’s touch, the belief that a sovereign could heal scrofula 
by touching the diseased. The efficacy of the touch of the 
king to cure this particular disease is historically fully authen- 
ticated. On Easter Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV touched 1600 
persons, saying, “The king touches you; God cures you.” 
Charles II touched almost 100,000 persons; James in one of 
his journeys touched 800 persons. The historian Macaulay 
states that when William III refused to exercise this power 
it brought upon him “‘an avalanche of the tears and cries 
of parents of children who were suffering from scrofula. 
Bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at his im- 
piety.’ Generally the surgeons of the royal household were 
present and Mark xvi:17, 18 was read. Sir Thomas Browne 


THE HEALING QUESTION 61 


of Norwich, the author of ‘‘Religio Medici,” a good Christian 
physician, had a hopeless case of scrofula and suggested the 
king’s touch. ‘The monarch touched the child and there was 
a complete cure. 

During the Reformation period fanatics appeared who 
rejected the Scriptures and claimed that the Spirit was suff- 
cient to guide them. All kinds of extravagances were 
practiced by them, and supernatural illumination and 
powers claimed. Luther said then, “To them the Holy 
Scriptures are but a dead letter and they all cry, The Spirit! 
The Spirit! But most assuredly I will not follow where their 
spirit leads them.”’ Some Pentecostalites have stated also 
that they do not need the Bible any longer, inasmuch as the 
Baptism of the Spirit teaches them all things. A sad case is 
reported in D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation, when 
one of these fanatics “‘under divine guidance”’ killed his own 
brother. This has lately been paralleled in Canada. A cer- 
tain man in British Columbia attended the Vancouver 
meetings of a hypnotist, who claims to be a “divine healer.” 
This person became unbalanced through the religious excite- 
ment, and then imagined that his little grandchild was 
possessed by ademon. He murdered the child and expected 
a miracle in the resurrection of the child after he had killed it. 
The Canadian Government tried him for murder, but merci- 
fully sent him to an asylum. 

In the different centuries there are witnesses to the 
fact that God answers prayer in behalf of those who are sick, 
and many cases of healing through believing prayer took 
place. In the chapter on ‘“The Believer in Sickness” we 
mention some of them. Coming to more recent times we 
find Prince Hohenlohe, a Roman Catholic Bishop. In his 
youth he met a peasant, who had cured a number of people 
by the laying on of hands. From him the Prince caught his 


62 THE HEALING QUESTION 


enthusiasm, and became famous as a healer. Some of his 
cures were indisputably authentic. Another priest, Joseph 
Gassner, effected many cures in Swabia. Father Mathew, 
when engaged in his campaign against intemperance, was 
successful in curing the sick. After his death hundreds upon 
hundreds visited his tomb and many crutches were left there. 

In 1808, a Mr. Austin, in the town of Colchester, Vermont, 


gave out that he had the gift of healing, and that whosoever 
would describe the symptoms would receive from him a 
“healing word.” ‘Thousands turned to him. Mail carriers 
groaned under the ever increasing burden of thousands of 
letters. Soon the deaf heard, the blind saw, consumption 
disappeared, as soon as the magic word was uttered. But it 
did not last very long.* 


In the first part of the XIX century the Irvingite move- 
ment developed so-called supernatural manifestations. These 
consisted in the gift of tongues, prophecies, and the laying on 
of hands, and healing of the sick. ‘The latter was not the 
prominent feature. If we were writing on “‘the gift of 
tongues,” tracing it historically, we could show that this 
counterfeit of the apostolic days appeared many times, fre- 
quently associated with deeds of fanaticism and vileness, and 
always traced to the influences of evil spirits. The Pente- 
costal Movement of today, which claims to be a restoration 
of the gift of tongues, with its unscriptural teaching as to the 
Baptism of the Holy Spirit, its pretensions of miracles of 
healing, has the same spurious character. 

We come next to one of the vilest religious frauds, Mor- 
monism. It was born through the lying pretensions of a 
man whose character was most vicious. We cannot enter 
into the details of this pit-begotten movement, and if we 


*Turner, “Mormonism in All Ages.”” New York, 1842. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 63 


had the space, we would hesitate to fill our pages with the 
miserable deceptions and immoralities. But this movement 
claims the gift of tongues, prophecies and supernatural 
healing of diseases. In working miraculous cures, the 
Mormons are fully equal to Catholics and non-Catholics. 
They record many miraculous healings. In their widespread 
European propaganda, praying with the sick and anointing 
them, plays an important part. Brigham Young was a 
miracle worker and a prophet. Once a man came from 
Europe to Salt Lake. The man had lost a leg, and had such 
implicit faith in the deceiver Young that he thought he could 
obtain another through prayer. The fox-like prophet ex- 
plained to him that while it would be easy for him to pray 
him into a new leg, he thought he had better not do it, for in 
his resurrection he would have then three legs instead of two.* 

We mention “‘Shakerism” next. This movement of the 
XVIII and XIX centuries was also an immoral movement. 
The vilest sexual perversions are recorded in the annals of 
Shakerism. We do not care to repeat them. Ann Lee, its 
founder, was immoral, and often got beastly drunk. Dancing 
in a nude state was practiced at many occasions. But the 
Shakers had the gift of tongues and mumbled a gibberish, as 
the Pentecostalites do in our day. Ann Lee was finally 
declared to be “the second coming of Christ.” They 
practiced the laying on of hands for sickness, had the gift 
of “laughing,” sang in unknown tongues, spoke of ‘“‘the 
power” coming upon them, which gave them violent shakings, 
or put them into a state of unconsciousness. The same 


*See “Faith Healing,” by Dr. Buckley, pages 35-37. For full in- 
formation on the Mormon cures, gift of tongues and other delusions 
consult: Stenhouse, “‘Rocky Mountain Saints,’ New York, 1873; 
H. Williams, ““The Abominations of Mormonism Exposed,” Cincinnati, 
1852; J. C. Bennet, “An Expose of J. Smith,” Boston, 1842; and 
similar works. 


64 THE HEALING QUESTION 


“power” is displayed in Pentecostalism, McPhersonism, 
Priceism and other gift of tongues and healing cults, and is 
easily explained through the laws of hypnotism and auto- 
hypnotism. 

Another vile, anti-christian movement is Spiritism, com- 
monly known as Spiritualism. It is a Satanic movement in 
which unquestionably unseen evil forces are at work, though 
the greater part of its manifestations consist in downright 
fraud. Spiritism claims communication with the dead, spirit 
manifestations, and often the mediums speak in a strange 
tongue. Spirit healings are frequently practiced, and thous- 
ands of dupes have been fleeced out of fortunes. 

From the middle of the XIX century to our times in which 
we write there has been a most astonishing increase of faith- 
healers, divine healers, and scores of healing cults, and the 
end is not yet. Foremost among these is that pernicious 
movement, which has come to stay, ‘Christian Science,” 
falsely so called. It was invented by a woman, whose moral 
character has been so much exposed that we need not call 
attention to it again. Christian Science is an anti-christian 
movement. It denies all the leading articles of the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ, denies His essential Deity, His atoning work 
on the cross, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the fact of sin 
and the reality of disease and death. It is the metaphysical 
rambling of the mad-house. ‘Their church stamp has on it 
the words of our blessed Lord, “Heal the sick.” They claim 
to do the same works which our Lord did, which they cer- 
tainly do not. They work, under a religious profession, the 
law of “‘the power of mind over matter” to perfection, claim- 
ing to heal all manner of diseases, till those cured end, like 
the rest of humanity, in the cemetery. 

In almost every decade during the past seventy-five years 
some special healer appeared, claiming the power to heal 


THE HEALING QUESTION 65 


and attracting wide attention. ‘There was one Schlatter who, 
a generation ago, had a tremendous following. Alexander 
Dowie came from Australia and started a movement, the 
backbone of which was “‘divine healing.” He finally claimed 
to be Elijah, the restorer; established a city on the shores of 
Lake Michigan, Zion City, in which no bacon, no ham sand- 
wiches, no drugs are permitted. He combined the spiritual 
with the commercial in selling lots, establishing certain 
industries, and after spending money lavishly, bringing 
hundreds of people on extra trains from Chicago to New 
York, to convert New Yorkers and empty their pocket books, 
failed miserably. Zion City continues more or less on the 
same principles. 

We mention Dorothea Trudel and Pastors Blumhardt and 
Rein of Switzerland and Germany. In their work at least 
nothing of the fanatical of later movements, such as speaking 
in tongues, is seen. ‘There were undoubtedly answers to 
prayer in numerous cases. A. B. Simpson started the “four 
fold Gospel’? movement known as the “Christian and Mis- 
sionary Alliance.” Faith-healing, called “divine healing,” 
is practiced by them. Mr. Simpson, after having built up 
his theory of a four-fold Gospel, rejecting the use of means, 
was forced to turn towards the end of his life to medical 
counsel and treatment, and in doing this contradicted his 
divine healing system. 

There was another about the end of the XIX century by 
name of Sandford, who started the ‘‘Holy Ghost and Us” 
movement, in Maine. He was one of the worst fanatics 
on the healing lines, and finally the government stepped in 
and charges of manslaughter and cruelty to children were 
brought against him. He had a “divine revelation” that 
days of fasting were to be appointed, and mothers, domi- 
neered by this fanatic, had to deny their milk to sucklings. 


66 THE HEALING QUESTION 


One child died. Later he went from bad to worse and landed 
in the Federal prison of Atlanta. He endorsed the healing 
system of Mr. Simpson, with whom, we believe, he was 
associated for a time. Among others who followed the lines 
of healing we mention Dr. Cullis of Boston, W. E. Boardman, 
George O. Barnes, Mrs. Baxter, Pastor Schrenk, and many 
more. 

About twenty years ago in a small meeting in Azusa Street 
of Los Angeles, California, where colored people gathered, it 
was claimed that “another Pentecost” had fallen. The 
excited colored people began to talk in strange tones, which 
was at once declared to be a restoration of the original gift of 
tongues. This movement spread like wild-fire and appeared _ 
almost simultaneously in every part of the United States and 
Canada, in fact it appeared in less than no time in Europe, in 
England, Sweden, Germany, and in a few weeks in other 
continents.* ‘Those who held to faith healing, like A. B. 
Simpson and his associates, pronounced the movement as a 
genuine one, inaugurated by a new outpouring of the Holy 
Spirit and predicted great success. The name “Pentecostal” 
was adopted. They called it also “the latter rain” and 
looked upon it as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel 
(Chapter 11:28), another Pentecost, while others termed it 
“the Apostolic Faith Movement.” Its doctrinal declaration 
is that another Day of Pentecost has come and that now, as 
it was in Acts, when the Holy Spirit was given, each Christian 
must have his individual Pentecost. This Pentecost, or 
baptism with the Holy Spirit, must be sought by self-sur- 
render, by letting go of self; there must be a waiting, as it 
was before the Holy Spirit came from heaven to earth. 
When finally the seeker receives his Pentecost he will receive 


*This is a sinister aspect. Spiritism with its rappings andftable 
moving was propagated in the same manner. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 67 


the evidence of it in speaking in a strange tongue. Only 
those who can speak in tongues are really baptized with the 
Spirit. This looks like a very scriptural teaching, but it is 
practically the most unscriptural harangue, which outstrips 
the delusions of some of the other fanatical movements. 
There can never be another Pentecost, for the simple reason 
that no other Pentecost is promised in Scripture, and no other 
Pentecost is needed. The Holy Spirit was given on the 
original Day of Pentecost and since that day He has re- 
mained here, and no second, or individual Pentecost can 
take place. All true believers share in that gift and need 
not to seek it. 

The so-called ‘‘tarrying meetings” which were inaugurated 
and are still in progress all over Christendom, are veritable 
scenes of confusion and often of indecency. Men and women 
scream and moan; others are convulsed, shaking from head 
to foot; still others fall down unconscious and remain in that 
condition for hours. When the waiting is over they begin 
to utter sounds, which they cannot help themselves from 
uttering. They are forced by some power, which has taken 
control, to speak words which neither they nor others under- 
stand. This is called the ‘“‘gift of tongues.’ In all our 
research and investigation we have not found a single case of 
a genuine language being spoken. Women and girls and a 
few men thought they had the gift of speaking Chinese, 
Hindustani, etc., and declared “the Lord told them to go to 
China and India.” ‘They went and started to ‘“‘gibber”’ 
in the foreign countries to which they went, only to be 
laughed at. Some made a shameful shipwreck of their faith, 
and several girls, after they were delivered from the awful 
deception, turned to a life of shame. Mrs. Aimee Semple 
McPherson, who started out with the Pentecostal delusion, 
claims to have the gift of tongues and the gift of interpreta- 


68 THE HEALING QUESTION 


tion. She has often interpreted her own gibberish and that 
of others. Who is going to verify that it is genuine? 

In more than one respect the whole modern gift of tongues 
movement has been uncovered as emanating from evil spirits, 
through whom Satan works as an angel of light. It does not 
differ from similar movements in past centuries.* Demon 
possession has often been brought to light in this cult. It 
has landed many victims in insane asylums and led to other 
disastrous results. The spuriousness of the movement is 
likewise demonstrated by the fact that it has divided into 
different sects. The Holy Spirit in His work never divides 
but always unites. Healing of diseases is associated with 
the Pentecostal cults. In fact through Pentecostalism the 
healing propaganda, with its unscriptural claims, unscriptural 
foundation and interpretations, is now covering nearly all 
the civilized countries. 

We cannot mention all the “divine healers’”” who go about 
today, and speak of only two, because they have worked 
the healing program in a prominent way and have found 
many imitators, both men and women, and occasionally 
young girls. We have reference to Mrs. Aimee Semple 
McPherson and her successful disciple “‘Dr. Price.”? Mrs. 
McPherson, whose checkered past we cannot follow here, 
before she settled down in Los Angeles, held healing cam- 
paigns, waiting meetings, gift of tongues meetings, etc., in 
numerous cities. Such reports of miracles were sent out 
that she became known as “the miracle woman.” The 
spurious claims and the evil results of these capmaigns 
will be brought to light in the next chapters. She amassed 
a considerable fortune through her healing campaigns, 
and all kinds of schemes were resorted to to obtain funds 
for a tabernacle, such as selling chairs at twenty-five dollars 


*See Sir Robert Anderson on “Spirit Manifestations.” 


THE HEALING QUESTION 69 


apiece. The many hundreds of unfortunates who come 
to be healed are always closely scrutinized by her mother; 
only those who appear to be a good risk are permitted 
to present themselves for healing. Only a few receive 
the coveted cards of admission, while hundreds are denied 
the privilege of “anointing” with oil. When the act has 
been done, in many cases the pronouncement of healing 
follows. 

Her disciple Mr. Price goes practically on the same lines. 
He has a woman along, who seems to claim the gift of dis- 
cernment. Only those who pass her “discerning eye’’ are 
permitted to be anointed with oil. When the healer Price 
touches the person, the person falls over and lies for some 
time on the platform in an unconscious state. ‘This is called 
“the power,” and claimed to be the power of God. His 
pretended healings have been investigated and have been 
shown to be mostly deceptions or the results of hypnotism, 
not differing from the results achieved by professional 
hypnotists, minus a religious profession. 

There is also a Mr. Bosworth, who has invented an ad- 
ditional “strange teaching” as to faith healing. He started 
with Pentecostalism. Inasmuch as these healers with their 
healing campaigns preach a good deal of the Truth of God, 
the Gospel, prophetic truths and others, they are a special 
menace to the untaught and unsuspecting in the household of 
faith. And now after these investigations of Scripture as to 
healing, and the historical tracing, we are prepared for a closer 
examination of the healing question as it confronts us today. 


CHAPTER. VI 
Examination of Scripture Passages Used For 
Divine Healing. 


Divine healers use certain passages of Scripture upon which 
they base their systems and their claims. An examination 
of these passages is now in order. We do not refer to the few 
passages in the Old Testament Scriptures which are fre- 
quently quoted, like Exodus xv:26 and Deuteronomy vii:15. 
These passages have nothing whatever to do with the Church, 
for they were addressed to Israel under the law dispensation. 
We confine ourselves exclusively to the New Testament. 

Matthew viii:17. “That it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by Esatas the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirm- 
ities, and bare our sicknesses.’ This is the passage upon 
which the leading divine healers formulate their doctrine that 
when our Lord died on the cross, besides bearing our sins, 
He also bore our infirmities and our sicknesses. He made 
atonement for the ills of our bodies as He made atonement 
for the ills of our souls. The phrase “healing is in the atone- 
ment” is used constantly by all these healing systems. The 
“Christian and Missionary Alliance” puts alongside ‘“‘Christ 
our Justifier and Sanctifier”’ the third expression of the four- 
fold Gospel, “‘Christ our Healer,’ which supports the con- 
tention that Christ died for our sicknesses. But there is no 
such fourfold Gospel taught in the Scriptures. The greatest 
Gospel preacher, the Apostle Paul, never preached it, nor 
does the Holy Spirit ever speak of a fourfold Gospel. There 
is but one Gospel. 

All other divine healers follow this teaching and tell those 
who are sick to believe that Christ by His work on the cross 


70 


THE HEALING QUESTION 71 


has wrought healing for diseases and all bodily infirmities. 
Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson in a sermon on “‘A double 
Cure for a double Curse’’ declares that Christ provided a 
double cure, Salvation and Healing, that Christ has atoned 
for sins and sicknesses. ‘Then she states that the bearing 
of our sicknesses was accomplished in a special way. Here 
are her words: ‘‘Was He whipped that my many sins might 
be washed away? No, child, the blood of the Cross was 
sufficient for that. ‘Then why did they pluck the beard from 
His face and beat Him with cruel staves? Was that for 
cleansing for sin? No, child, the blood was sufficient for that 
. . . Then why did they whip Him so? Why, child, do you 
not know the meaning of that lash, the cruel blows of the 
smiter’s scourge? T'was thus He bore our suffering, and 
by His stripes ye are healed. . . . At the whipping post He 
purchased our healing.’ This is a new and contradictory 
invention. She practically teaches, if this can be called 
teaching, that our sicknesses were not atoned for in the same 
manner as our sins. She teaches two separate and distinct 
atonements, a thing which is altogether unknown in Scrip- 
ture. This invention is akin to some of Mrs. Eddy’s per- 
versions, 

The Bosworth Brothers with their dogmatic assertions 
outstrip even Mrs. McPherson’s unscriptural statements. 
F. F, Bosworth is a strong believer in the theory that Christ 
atoned tor our diseases. Here are his words: “I want to 
establish this in your minds, that Jesus included healing for 
your body as one of the benefits provided for you by His 
death on the cross.” Then he makes the astounding claim 
that while the wine in the Lord’s Supper represents the blood 
of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, the bread represents 
His body broken for the healing of every man’s body. We 
quote him again: ‘“‘You can be healed when you put the 


nh 4 THE HEALING QUESTION 


bread in your mouth, if not before, by discerning the Lord’s 
body.’ —“‘It is just as easy to be healed of cancer as to be 
forgiven of sins.’”’—‘“*Thousands are in the cemeteries before 
their time because they have not discerned the Lord’s body 
broken for their healing. Thousands of others are sick, 
who can be healed if they will discern it.” Then he cites 
different cases where persons (nearly all women) were healed 
when they ate a piece of bread and discerned the Lord’s 
body. Tumors, goiters, rheumatism and indigestion dis- 
appeared miraculously when that piece of bread was eaten 
in the correct and scriptural way. Such teaching is unknown 
in the entire history of Christianity, and is practically on the 
same level with the Romish perversions of the great Me- 
morial feast. Ifthe eating of a piece of bread at the Lord’s 
table results in the healing of diseases, then the drinking of 
the wine must effect in the same manner the forgiveness of 
sins. It is right next to the bloodless sacrifice of the mass. 
The invention of Mr. Bosworth is more than unscriptural, 
it is wicked. And the poor, struggling sick believe this 
perversion and delusion. We quote from an article published 
in “Our Hope” dealing with this error: 


“When our Lord, that night in which He was betrayed, took bread, 
and gave it to His disciples, was it that their bodies might be healed? 
Was it that they, and all who should come after them, were to re- 
member that He bore their sicknesses on the cross, as the cup was to 
bring to their remembrance that He bore their sins there? Was this 
to remind them that the awful judgment of God rolled over His blessed 
Head—not only because of their sins, but because of their sicknesses 
that were to be upon Him, too? If that were the case, would it not 
follow that if they had, or we have, no sickness, we must omit this part 
of the Supper, for it can have no interest for us, since the body of the 
Lord was given for the healing of every man’s body! I can but believe 
that my readers will find it as difficult to read calmly as I to write 
of this flippant travesty of the most solemn truth, so dogmatically, 
even exultantly pressed as a wonderful discovery by Mr. Bosworth, 
and as the very basis of his teaching. : 

But is there, then, no difference in the teaching of the two emblems? 
Indeed there is; but it is as far as the poles from Mr. B’s deduc- 


THE HEALING QUESTION 73 


tions. The bread speaks, as a divinely selected emblem, of that judg- 
ment that passed upon Him as our substitute during the last three 
hours on the cross, from noon to three. As the waving grain had to 
be cut off by the sickle, so we remember Him as being thus “‘cut off’’ 
for our sins (Daniel ix:26). As the bread had been under the mill- 
stones, so we remember Him as being thus “‘bruised for our iniquities.” 
As it had gone into the oven, and been subject to its heat, so we re- 
member Him, as suffering for us the awful heat of God’s judgment 
upon our sins which He was bearing in His own holy Body, and with 
adoring hearts and the deepest self-abasement we take that bread 
—for it was our sins—not our frailties or sicknesses or premature 
death, that He was bearing in that dark hour! Here we see how 
inflexibly righteous is our God, for even when His holy, precious, be- 
loved Son is bearing our sins—yes, being made sin—His eye doth not 
pity, His hand doth not spare, and it is thus that we “‘discern”’ that it 
is not the mere bread that might give us ‘‘physical benefits only,’’ 
but, to faith, the Lord’s Body.”’* 

But what does Matthew viii:17 mean? Does it not say 
that Esaias’ prophecy “Himself took our infirmities, and bare 
our sicknesses”’ is fulfilled by Him? And therefore did He 
not take the sicknesses and the pains of our bodies upon 
Himself, as He took our sins, and bore them all away as 
the Lamb of God? And if so, then what is the reason to deny 
that healing is in the atonement? Such are the reasonings 
of divine healers. We only need to give this star text another 
glance to find the answer which annihilates the whole argu- 
ment. The Lord Jesus Christ had healed many, and in con- 
nection with these miracles of healing we find the text ‘“That 
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet.” 
Then the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in the day when our 
Lord Jesus Christ healed the great multitude. It was ful- 
filled about three years before the Lord died on the cross. 
The prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in His divine ministry 
of healing, and not when He hung on the cross. Some, to 
overcome this fact, state that the three years of His life were 
years in which He made atonement, till the work was capped 


on the cross. But this is only another error. Our Lord did 


*F. C. Jennings, “Our Hope,”? November, 1921. 


74 THE HEALING QUESTION 


not bear sins during His holy life on earth, nor was He made 
sin for us, till He hung on the cross, when God made Him sin 
for us. The teaching that Christ carried our diseases up to 
the cross and that He had actual disease Himself is another 
unscriptural invention. But they go to the fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah and say that the bruises and stripes pre- 
dicted there were laid upon our substitute, because He made 
atonement for our sicknesses. But where is this written? 

The chapter in Isaiah assures us that He was bruised for 
our iniquities. Nor is there anywhere in prophecy a passage 
in which the Spirit of God associates bodily healings with the 
atoning work of our Lord. In vain do we look through 
the Epistles for such a doctrine. What then does it mean, 
“Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses”? It 
can mean but one thing. The Lord Jesus entered in divine 
sympathy into the depth of the need He so graciously re- 
lieved. He suffered with those who suffered. The burden 
of infirmities and sicknesses He shared sympathetically with 
the afflicted ones. ‘In their afflictions He was afflicted.” 

At another occasion he expressed this sympathy by sigh- 
ing, before He healed the deaf and dumb, and Hé wept at 
the tomb of Lazarus. In this sense and in no other, He took 
our infirmities and bore our diseases. If it meant the future 
bearing on the cross the Holy Spirit would have made a 
mistake in writing “that it might be fulfilled.’ If He had 
atoned for our physical condition then death should also 
have been abolished. Diseases are but the stepping stones 
towards that goal of human life. We must add, that if it 
were true that Christ died for our sicknesses, then His aton- 
ing work in this respect is a failure. His people ever since 
these words were written have borne all manner of diseases 
and have died. Some of the greatest saints of God, the most 
mighty instruments of God the Holy Spirit, men of faith 


THE HEALING QUESTION 75 


and whole-souled devotion, were weak in body and afflicted 
with infirmities. The choicest saints on earth today are the 
thousands of shut-ins, who suffer in patience and sing their 
sweet songs in the night. 

Matthew x:8. “And as ye go, preach, saying, The king- 
dom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the levers, 
raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely ye have received, freely 
give.’ Some of these faith healers fall back on this com- 
mand. ‘They say, ‘“‘Jesus said, ‘Heal the sick... We only 
follow His instructions, and besides preaching we also heal 
the sick as He commanded.” ‘This command has nothing 
whatever to do with the Church. It was given to accom- 
pany a special message at a special time. When that mes- 
sage had been given at that special time the commission 
was no longer in force. The special message was the message 
of the kingdom promised to Israel, and the time was when 
His Jewish disciples were to evidence the genuineness of the 
message by the working of miracles. Nowhere in the New 
Testament is it repeated, or stated that the Church should 
“heal the sick.” But what about cleansing lepers and rais- 
ing the dead? Is this not also included in this commission? 
Why not fall back on this also and say “‘we raise the dead’’ 
because Christ told us to do so. And what about the other 
instructions given in Matthew x:1-10? Let these divine 
healers then be obedient to the command, “Freely ye have 
received, freely give.’’ Let them stop their collections, their 
“love-tokens,”’ and stop getting rich through the misfortunes 
of others. We know that some of these divine healers who 
possessed hardly a dollar are worth fortunes now, one is 
worth at least over a half of a million of dollars. It came 
through “‘healing campaigns” which netted weekly thousands 
of dollars. Any man or woman who claims to fulfill Christ’s 
command in Matthew is either ignorant or a fraud, perhaps 


both. 


76 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Mark xvi:17-18. “And these signs shall follow them that — 
believe; in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall 
speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if 
they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall 
lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’ This is another 
star text with the gift of tongues believers and the faith- 
healing cults. Many times well meaning people have 
written us and asked us if we did not believe that it is written: 
‘And these signs shall follow them that believe .....they 
shall speak in new tongues...... they shall lay hands on 
the sick, and they shall recover.”’ This is a fair sample of how 
delusionists and fanatics quote Scripture. Five things are 
mentioned in regard to signs. 1. Casting out demons. 
2. Speaking in new tongues. 3. Taking up _ serpents. 
4. Drinking a deadly thing. 5. Laying hands on the sick. 
Very cunningly only two of these five things are selected— 
the speaking in tongues and laying hands on the sick. But 
if these two signs are now with us, and a believer can talk 
in new tongues and lay hands on the sick for their recovery, 
what about the other three? They are never quoted by 
divine healers. Only a fool would take up a rattlesnake and 
rely upon the promise given here and play with the reptile. 
Several years ago a Pentecostal preacher in Alabama tried 
to make a demonstration that the Lord will keep His promise. 
Someone brought a rattler in a box. After calling upon the 
name of the Lord to make good His word, he loosed the 
string and was promptly bitten in the hand. Only expert 
medical attention and treatment saved his life. This is not 
faith but presumption. Only a fool would take a cup filled 
with a deadly poison and expect the Lord to save him from 
the consequences. 

What does the passage mean? It refers exclusively to 
the beginning of this present age. The Lord did not say, 


THE HEALING QUESTION 77 


“and these signs shall follow them that believe always.” 
These signs were not to continue throughout this dispensa- 
tion, but were present only in the beginning of it. In ful- 
fillment of this promise, they spoke with new tongues; they 
cast out demons; they laid hands on the sick, and they re- 
covered; a serpent bit Paul and he escaped harm, and 
probably some one may have drunk a deadly thing, though 
we have no record of this. 

John xiv:12. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that be- 
lieveth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater 
works than these shall he do, because I go to My Father.” This 
text is also used as an authority for faith-healing. Let us 
note that the Lord Jesus Christ does not speak here of the 
works of a special class of believers, but He says: ‘‘He that 
believeth on Me.” It includes every believer who reads 
these lines. But who can claim to do now the same works, 
which He had done in instantaneous healings, opening the 
eyes of those born blind, and raising the dead. Is there a 
record anywhere in the history of the Church since the days 
of the Apostles, that believers did the same miracles which 
Christ did, including the raising of the dead? Divine healers 
may claim to heal like Christ healed. ‘They do not. We 
know that the girl Dorcas had died, and Peter presented her 
alive. The Apostle Paul brought Eutychus to life after he 
had expired. But here we read that he who believes on 
Him is to do greater works. ‘These greater works are cer- 
tainly not of a physical nature. No greater work could ever 
be done than the raising up of a man who was four days 
in the grave. The greater works are spiritual works. 

The raising of a soul out of the grave of sin is a greater work 
than the raising of one physically dead. ‘The dead who were 
raised by our Lord, Jairus’s daughter, the young man at the 
gates of Nain, and Lazarus, had to die again. Dorcas and 


78 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Eutychus also had to die, but when the soul dead in tres- 
passes and sin is quickened and raised from the dead, eternal 
life is given which can never more be shadowed by death. 
These are the greater works. 

Romans v111:11. “But tf the Spirit of Him that raised up 
Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit 
that dwelleth in you.” ‘This text is used by divine healers, as 
if the body of the believer, because indwelt by the Holy 
Spirit, is quickened into health in the case of sickness; that 
the indwelling Spirit will impart the resurrection life of 
Christ. But why do believers die? The indwelling Spirit 
is omnipotent; He can quicken so that death has no chance. 
The whole divine healing application is erroneous. The 
preceding verses make it clear that the spirit of the believer 
has been made alive by the Holy Spirit, as being due to the 
righteousness effected by the cross of Christ. But the 
physical body of the believer is dead on account of sin. The 
quickening of the believer’s body is not a present fact but 
awaits future realization. The word ‘‘quicken” means to 
make alive that which is dead. The quickening takes place 
in resurrection, when the believer’s body will be made like 
unto His own glorious body. As the Holy Spirit had a part 
in the resurrection of Christ, so He will quicken the believer’s 
body when the Lord comes, because He dwelt in that body 
as the seal of redemption. Many of the divine healers who 
preached this text, taught that the Holy Spirit quickens now, 
heals and is also an agent of prevention of illness, finally 
caught a disease, and nephritis, tuberculosis or some heart 
trouble carried them off, and their bodies died like the bodies 
of unbelievers die. 

James 0:14. “Is any sick among you. Let him call for the 
elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him 


THE HEALING QUESTION 79 


with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall 
save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have 
committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” This is the most 
used text, or rather misused text, by healers and their 
systems, and demands our closest scrutiny. In the first place 
it is false teaching and a perversion of this text when it 
is said “this is the one divinely given direction in cases of all 
sickness.” Hence in the healing meetings held by these men 
and women James v:14 is given as the one and universal 
way for anybody in the case of sickness, and the hope is 
held out, if a person has faith, and is anointed with oil, that 
healing will follow. Every year many thousands of people 
are deceived by these statements and suffer the most awful 
disappointment. The wrecks which some ‘“‘divine healers” 
leave behind are truly appalling. James v:14 was never 
intended to be a remedy for human ills in all cases, to be ap- 
plied at all times, in all places and under all conditions. ‘The 
definite assurance is given, “‘the prayer of faith shall save the 
sick and the Lord will raise him up.”’ But can this be the 
reasonable outcome of every sickness? Let us think of the 
multitudes of true believers who died as the result of some 
sickness. ‘Thousands who know Christ, young and old, pass 
away every year through some illness. Now if these “‘divine 
healers” are right in saying that this is the way all cases of 
sickness must be dealt with, God’s appointed way in every 
sickness, then these believers died because they did not call 
the elders of the Church. They died because they were not 
anointed with oil, and though earnest prayer was made by 
loved ones, they died because those many prayers were not 
offered in faith. Such must be the logical conclusion. 

The case of the sick one mentioned in James is a special 
case. James’s Epistle was the first Epistle written. It is 
addressed to the twelve tribes scattered abroad. We are 


80 THE HEALING QUESTION 


still upon Jewish ground here, though James and those to 
whom he writes were believers. ‘The old covenant promised 
to the Israelite freedom from disease if he obeyed the cove- 
nant of thelaw. Incase sickness came it was looked upon as 
the result of some sin committed. This is the case here. 
Sickness is viewed as a chastening of the Lord for some 
specific sins, and as this is confessed and put away, the chast- 
ening ends and the sick one is raised up. Some healers 
have seen that this is in question here and applied it in their 
practice. A short time ago the writer was requested to call 
on a woman who despaired of her soul’s salvation. She told 
us a pitiful story. She suffered from some heart affection. 
Someone induced her to go to a “healing meeting” in the 
Southland. She was anointed and thought she had received 
some benefit, but the ailment came back stronger than before. 
When she visited the healer again and presented her case, he 
told her that she had better find out the sin she had com- 
mitted; that there was an unconfessed sin in her life, and 
unless she confessed that sin she would never be raised up. 
The poor soul could not locate that special sin and when we 
visited her she was on the verge of despair, thinking she was 
lost forever. How pitiful! 

But in the next place, what about the elders? We do not 
enter into an examination of the question—do we still have 
elders today in the Apostolic sense? Let us suppose such 
elders as are described in the First Epistle to Timothy 
(chapter iii) are available. They are to be called. In the 
“divine healing meetings” there seems to be only one person 
who does the work of anointing and praying. That person is 
the whole thing. He is the outstanding figure. The sick 
and afflicted look to him. He has secured a reputation that 
his anointing, his touch and his prayers help the sick. He 
knows how to advertise in a sensational way. All the divine 


THE HEALING QUESTION 81 


healers, Mrs. McPherson, Mrs. Crawford, younger women, 
whose names need not be given, Bosworth, Price and all the 
rest are big advertisers. Instead of the sick sending for 
the elders, the elders run after the sick. The trumpet of 
advertising is blown as loud as the trumpet of a circus. 
All is centered upon that one leader and the command 
“‘call the elders” is competely set aside. 

But there is a more flagrant disobedience involved. The 
most successful healers are women. Who has authorized a 
woman to anoint the sick? Certainly not the Holy Spirit, who 
declares emphatically what a woman’s place is to be in the 
Church (I Timothy ii:12-14). An elder, we read in Scripture, 
is to be “‘the husband of one wife.”” Where do we read that 
an elder is to be “the wife of one husband”? Where? Will 
some one answer this question? No woman, no matter what 
her gifts, her ability and her pretensions might be, can ever 
be an elder. She is disqualified by the Word of God from 
carrying out the instruction given in James v:14. Yet 
women today are in the anointing business more than men. 
They are not subject to the Word of God. They disobey 
its instructions. They take a place in leadership which is the 
very opposite from what the Scriptures say her place is to be. 

In the next place we come to the anointing. What is this 
anointing in our text? In “divine healing’? meetings a drop 
of oil is used and put on the forehead. Some do it in the 
form of a cross. Most of these healers at the same time 
touch and stroke the forehead and other parts of the body. 
If there is eye trouble, or ear trouble, these organs are mas- 
saged. If it is a limb which is affected, it is massaged. A 
gentleman in San Diego told us that his wife persuaded him 
to submit to an anointing by the hands of Mrs. McPherson 
for deafness in one ear. She anointed him and at the same 
time massaged the affected ear in a vigorous way. She then 
asked him, ‘Can you hear?’ He said, “‘Yes.’’ Then there 


82 THE HEALING QUESTION 


was handclapping over another miracle. Thirty minutes 
later he was as deaf as ever. Not the oil had done anything 
but the massage, but it did not last. 


Let us look first at the word “‘anointing.”” Even in our 
English language the word means more than using a drop 
of oil. In our English translation the word ‘‘anoint”’ stands 
for two wholly different Greek words. The first is ‘‘ Alet- 
phein”’; it is the common and mundane. ‘“Chriein”’ is the 
sacred and heavenly word.* Aleiphein is used indiscrimi- 
nately of all actual anointings, whether with oil or ointments; 
while ‘‘Chriein,” in its connection with ‘“‘Christos” (Christ) 
is absolutely restricted to the anointing of the incarnate 
Son of God by the Father and the Holy Spirit. The word 
*‘Aleiphein” used here and translated ‘‘anointing”’ is more 
correctly translated by “‘massaging’’; the correct rendering 
would then be “massaging him with oil.”” Sir Robert And- 
erson, a scholar and able exegete, gives the following helpful 
comment on this matter: “Most expositors represent this 
anointing as a sacramental rite to be performed by the 
elders. And the inaccurate rendering reading ‘anointing 
him with oil’ lends itself to this error. But as it is certain 
that among Orientals the elders would not themselves 
massage a female invalid, it must not be assumed that they 
did so in other cases. The Revised Version marginal read- 
ing ‘having anointed him’ is grammatically correct; but 
‘after he has been anointed,’ better suits our English idiom. 
The added words ‘in the name of the Lord’ are commonly 
taken as proof that the anointing was sacramental. But 
this betokens ignorance of the true character of the Chris- 
tian life; for it is to common and mundane acts that the 
exhortation refers, ‘Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do it 


*Trench: Synonyms. 


a: ee. ea ete 


THE HEALING QUESTION 83 


all in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Colossians iii:17). The 
passage is clear and simple. Its teaching may be summed 
up in two words, namely, the use of means and believing 
prayer.” 

With this we are in full accord. We are fully persuaded 
that the anointing with oil has no sacramental meaning, but 
was used for the physical benefit of the sick. What we have 
further to say on this matter will convince any sane and un- 
prejudiced mind. 


In the parable of the good Samaritan we find that he 
applied two remedies to the bruised and mangled body of 
the victim of the highway robbers, wine and oil. In using oil 
the Samaritan used the most popular remedy of the ancient 
world. Olive oil was regarded throughout the Orient as one 
of the most potent agents for the relief and cure of disease. 
Celsus, Josephus, Pliny, Arctaeus, Galen and other ancient 
writers refer to the medicinal use of oil. The ancient physi- 
cians recommended that patients who had passed through 
the first stage of fevers should be massaged with oil. They 
also recommended the liberal use of oil as a preventative. 
It is still so today. Niebuhr assures us that the first remedy 
used by Jews in Arabia is an oil massage. But there is 
stronger evidence than this. Frequent references are made 
in talmudical literature that the Jews, in the first part of 
the Christian era, made use of oil in the treatment of nearly 
all diseases. We have given special attention in research to 
confirm this.* According to these sources incantations, 
magical and enchanting murmurings were used, a custom 
which the Jews had adopted during the Babylonian cap- 
tivity. Babylonian research has established the fact that 

*Those who have access to the Talmud may turn to Bab. Yoma 


77b; Yer. Shab. xiv:l4c. See also “Jewish Encyclopedia,” Vol. I, 
page 613, 


ee Sa THE HEALING QUESTION 


special magical incantations were used for every known 
disease. Hundreds of these magic words and incantations 
are found on the cuneiform tablets and bricks.* The famous 
Hebraist Lightfoot is right when he says: “‘It was customary 
for the unbelieving Jews to make use of anointing for the 
sick joined with a magical and enchanting muttering; but 
how infinitely better is it to join to the use of oil the pious 
prayers of the elders of the Church.” 

We have shown the true and only satisfactory meaning 
of James v:14, 15. Exactly what is said today by healing 
systems and “‘divine healers” as to what this passage means, 
is that which it does not mean. ‘They forbid the use of 
means, when the passage endorses the use of means. They 
are on the same level with Romish practices by giving the 
anointing with oil a sacramental meaning. 

Our historical research has shown that nothing was heard 
of a sacramental use of oil for the sick till the fifth century, 
the time when the Church was about plunging into the 
Romish apostasy. The first four centuries of church his- 
tory know nothing whatever of the superstitious use of oil 
in case of sickness. Apart from the passage in James and 
in the Gospel of Mark (where oil also stands for a remedial 
agent) the rest of the New Testament knows nothing of a 
sacramental anointing of the sick. The Apostle Paul never 
mentioned it. As far as the record goes, he never used it. 
He left Trophimus sick, and the Holy Spirit instead of tell- 
ing Timothy to call for the elders, sent him a prescription. 
Nor is there any other teaching to be found in the great 
Church Epistles. With this we have shown that there is 
absolutely no Scriptural basis for the teachings and claims 
of “Divine Healing.” It lacks Scriptural support from start 
to finish. It is therefore Anti-Scriptural. But let us examine 


*F, Lenormant: The Magic of the Chaldeans. 571 pages. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 85 


next the pretended works and results of “‘Divine Healing”’ 
cults and their leaders, and we shall know them by their 
fruits. 


CHAPTER VII 
An Examination of the Works and Results of 
Divine Healers 


As stated before, the advertising propaganda of divine 
healers in their campaigns is done on an enormous scale. 
Whenever a circus comes to town, the town and the surround- 
ing country is placarded by advance agents advertising the 
show. Press notices of “the greatest on earth” are freely 
used. We believe one Barnum found out that it pays to 
advertise. Divine healing campaigns are carried on in the 
same way and truthfulness is a secondary matter. ‘To give 
an illustration of this sensational advertising, which must 
grieve the Holy Spirit, as it offends the truly spiritual of 
God’s people, we call attention to a sheet called ‘‘The 
National Labor Tribune,” used for some time by the Bosworth 
brothers as their advertising medium. In one issue are six 
big photographs of the healers and their audiences. In read- 
ing the contents of this issue one would think that the days 
of the Apostles are not only brought back, but that these 
healers are far ahead in their works of what happened in the 
beginning of the age.. We quote different headings: 

Wholly Deaf, healed.— Nervous twitching cured.—S pecialist 
said incurable—healed.—Sick 20 years; operated on 14 times; 
prayed for and healed.—Was deaf bui now hears.— Had nervous 
prostration; had 28 doctors in 21 months ; instantly healed —Ear 
drum gone; 17 doctors failed; now instantly healed— Had 
paralysis: healed by reading the ‘“‘Labor Tribune.”—Miracles 
and Wonders at the Bosworth meetings——Ear drum restored 
after being removed(!!)—Had many diseases; prayed for; 
cured.— Had eczema 14 years; cured.—Indian fighter and 

86 


THE HEALING QUESTION 87 


rough rider known as ossified man wins in terrific fight against 
death.—Foul, revolting cancer healed through prayer.—Tried 
20 doctors; insiantly healed.—Born paralyzed, now well (!)— 
Righi leg one and a half inch shorter than left leg; anointed and 
leg made as long as the other (!!).—Living without kidneys; 
world’s most miraculous case healed (!!)—Lost voice restored.— 
Tumor and asthma; completely healed.i—Toes turned up 15 
years; pain ended by reading “Labor Tribune’ (/!)—Serious 
case of neuritis healed.—Double hernia healed.—Instanily 
healed of stigmatism (!)— Healed from spinal meningitis.— 
Curvature of spine disappears instantly (!!)—Abscess of hip 
13 years; now like a newborn babe.—Etc. 

We single out one very much advertised case of a woman 
in Pittsburg, Pa.: “Living without kidneys; world’s most 
miraculous case healed.” ‘This miraculous case is being used 
far and wide for advertising purposes. Living without kid- 
neys! This woman had both of her kidneys removed by 
surgeons, and in spite of having no kidneys left she lives! One 
does not need to be a medical man to know that such a report 
is not true. It is the same as if some one would advertise 
*“Man living without a heart.” 

Other healers, Mrs. McPherson, Mr. Charles Price and 
their imitators, send forth similar advertising matter and 
reports of miracles of healing. They tell the Christian public 
that hundreds are being healed in the Name of Christ, and 
that the very same miracles are being wrought today, which 
Christ and His Apostles wrought. Now this is avery serious 
matter. If these claims are true, if these divine healers do the 
same miracles which Christ and His Apostles did in the 
beginning of this age, then God has surely visited His people 
and every Christian who rejects this “New Pentecost,” who 
does not accept the ministries of these miracle-workers sins 
dreadfully; he is guilty of opposing God and the gracious 


88 THE HEALING QUESTION 


work of the Holy Spirit. But if these claims are spurious, 
if no such miracles as Christ and His Apostles did take place 
in these healing campaigns, then the whole system cannot be 
too strongly condemned, for it is a deception. Now it is 
evident, claims like those advanced by these leaders of healing 
campaigns, must have first of all a Scriptural basis. If that 
is lacking no Christian can conscientiously endorse it. We 
have shown in our previous examination that every Scripture 
divine healers use for their system of divine healing falls to 
the ground under a sane and spiritual exegetical Pa 1 
tion. 

In the first place we want to show divine healing cults are not 
performing the same miracles which Christ did, nor the miracles 
which are recorded in the Book of Acts. In this respect the 
claim is altogether false. Our Lord healed all manner of 
disease and al/ manner of sickness. ‘They brought to Him all 
that were sick and He healed them all. ‘He healed al/ that 
needed healing” (Luke ix:11). Is this being done by modern 
healers? Several of them scrutinize the hundreds of appli- 
cants very closely and only permit certain ones to present 
themselves for anointing and prayer. To illustrate this we 
quote from the communication of a citizen of Fresno, Calif.: 

*‘Physicians have pronounced my wife to be heavily afflicted with 
hysterical epileptics, her spine being involved. I began about the 
middle of the McPherson meetings trying to get a card for my wife 
so that she might be healed. The card was denied her repeatedly. 
While I was waiting in the back prayer room, Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs, 
McPherson’s mother (who has the say about who is to get a card for 
healing) attracted my special attention. She said to a man on a 
couch, ‘Bend your knee. Now try again. Now can’t you raise your 
arm above your head? You cannot. Poor thing!’ Then to another, 
and it was the same, only this one could raise the hand or bend the 
knee. I was forced to the conclusion that they were practised out in 


this room before they were permitted to go out before the audience. 
The helpless ones were kept off the stage.” 


A reliable physician who watched closely another cam- — 


THE HEALING QUESTION 89 


paign states: “The sick applying for healing are carefully 
sorted over by the evangelist’s mother, and if they appear 
to be good risks, they are given cards which entitle them to 
the evangelist’s healing prayer.’’? Mr. Price imitates this 
method and has a woman along, who does the sorting. Think 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, or the Apostles doing such a thing! 
He never asked if a disease was considered incurable or not, 
nor what the symptoms were, but He healed them all of all 
manner of diseases. The most careful investigations by un- 
prejudiced persons have shown that in these healing meetings 
no cure of an organic disease has ever taken place. Nor do 
they bring to these healing meetings persons suffering from 
acute sicknesses. We mean typhoid, pneumonia, diphtheria, 
or similar diseases. Divine healers attempted frequently to 
heal some of these diseases with disastrous results. We know 
of several children who had diphtheria. Medical attention 
was refused. Prayer and anointing with oil was the only 
thing done for them. The children died. We have heard 
people testify that the Lord healed them of pneumonia and 
typhoid fever. But in each case a gradual and normal 
recovery was put down as healing. Each disease ran its 
appointed course. But that is not how the Lord Jesus 
healed. 

These modern healers do not heal the maimed. The Lord 
Jesus Christ did. In Matthew xv:30 we read a great multi- 
tude came and brought with them the maimed; the maimed 
were made whole. Some had no hands, others had lost feet 
and there was the miracle of making these maimed persons 
whole. ‘Then we remind the reader of the last healing our 
Lord did when He picked up the ear of the high priest’s 
servant, which had been completely severed by Peter’s 
hasty sword, and at once the servant had his ear back, and 
was perfectly whole. Come on, ye Divine Healers, with 


90 THE HEALING QUESTION 


your claim to do what Christ did in healing the sick and give 
us such a demonstration! And what about raising the dead? 
There have been claims made that some great miracle took 
place. A man testified that he had a diseased eye. It was 
removed by a surgeon. ‘Then the man said that in answer 
to prayer the Lord gave him a brand new eye. That man 
lied. A few years ago in California, after preaching in a 
certain church, a man came to the front and said to the 
writer that he is wrong in not believing in the present day 
miracles wrought by Mrs. McPherson and others. He had 
seen one. A boy had fallen out of a tree and sustained a 
bad fracture of the forearm. He said, we prayed for him 
and anointed him and while we were praying the arm was 
made perfectly whole. We asked him if he was sure that the 
arm was fractured. He replied in the affirmative, assuring 
us that the splintered bones were sticking through the 
skin and the bones came together while they prayed. We 
asked him, ‘“‘And you tell me that you saw this with 
your own eyes?” He assured us that he saw it. We told 
him that he is one of the biggest frauds in California. God 
can do this, no one doubts that. But this is not how God 
works now. 

The late Dr. A. J. Gordon in his book ‘“The Ministry of 
Healing”’ cites a similar case of a boy who was miraculously 
healed of a very bad double fracture of the arm. A healer 
who flourished over fifty years ago, W. E. Boardman de- 
clared that the child’s arm was miraculously healed the next 
day and was perfectly whole. This case was thoroughly in- 
vestigated by Dr. James Henry Lloyd, of the University of 
Pennsylvania, and in the ‘‘Medical Record” for March 27, 
1886, Dr. Lloyd published a letter from the very child, who 
had become a physician: 


THE HEALING QUESTION 91 


Dear Sir: The case you cite, when robbed of all its sensational 
surroundings is as follows: The child was a spoiled youngster who 
would have his own way; and when he had a green stick fracture of 
the forearm, and after having had it bandaged, for several days, con- 
cluded he would much prefer going without a splint, to please the 
spoiled child the splint was removed, and the arm carefully adjusted 
in a sling. As a matter of course, the bone soon united, as is custom- 
ary in children, and being only partially broken, of course all the 
sooner. This is the miracle! Some nurse or crank or religious enthu- 
siast, ignorant of matters physiological and histological, evidently 
started the story, and unfortunately my name—for I am the party— 
is being circulated in circles of faith-curites, and is given the sort of 
notoriety I do not crave. 


Very respectfully yours, 
Carl H. Reed. 


We feel sorry that this untrue account is still being cir- 
culated in Dr. A. J. Gordon’s book. Edition after edition 
has been printed in which this fake miracle is made prom- 
inent (see page 184 of the 13th Edition). And there are 
other incorrect statements in the same volume. 

In the second place instantaneous healings as constantly per- 
formed by our Lord and also by the Apostles are not done by 
Divine Healers. The Lord said “Receive thy sight” and 
immediately the eyes of the blind were opened. ‘Stretch 
forth thy hand,” and it did not take several months to re- 
store the withered arm. ‘‘Arise and take up thy couch and 
walk,” and the lame man walked. “‘Ephphatha” and the 
deaf heard not a little better, but his deafness was entirely 
gone. He touched the fever stricken brow and the fever did 
not drop a little, and get a little less the next day, but the 
fever, left and the temperature was normal. He touched the 
leper and there was not a gradual improvement, but the 
moment His hand touched the leper he was clean. 

Divine healers also claim to heal the blind, the dumb, the 
deaf and the paralyzed, as well as others, But instantaneous 
healings from blindness, fever and other afflictions do not 
take place in their services. There is a great deal of excite- 


92 THE HEALING QUESTION 


ment. There is fervent singing. Faith, faith, and still more 
faith is demanded and the poor sufferers make every possible 
effort to have faith and expect “the miraculous touch” 
which will make them well. Everything is keyed up to the 
highest pitch. Then the supreme moment comes. The 
anointing takes place. Under some hypnotic influences 
the sick fall to the ground, and while they go under the spell 
they hear the suggestion of the hypnotist, “‘Jesus heals 
thee,” ‘““Thou art healed.” The patient comes out of the 
spell and professes to be healed, simply repeating what was 
suggested. We could fill scores of pages with cases of sup- 
posed healing, which are at best make-believe and self- 
deceptions. We give a few illustrations. 

Finding testimonials in the reports of different healers, as. 
to healing, and the name and address of the person given, 
we wrote these persons several weeks after the heralded 
miraculous cure had taken place. One lady in Pennsylvania 
professed to have been healed of tuberculosis in the second 
stage. We asked her a few questions as to symptoms; if 
she still had an afternoon fever and general debility, etc. 
She answered and said, “‘Yes, I have been healed, though 
my healing is not yet accomplished. I have taken it in faith 
and claim it in faith. I still have a regular fever and a 
frightful cough. But ‘Hallelujah’ in spite of the symptoms 
I am healed. I will soon be getting better and will be 
entirely well. I was anointed and the power is upon me.” 

A colored woman presented herself in the Angelus Temple 
to be anointed for blindness. After having been anointed 
with oil, Mrs. McPherson asked her if she could see, turning 
a very strong electric light in her face. The colored woman 
said “‘Yes, I see,”? and the whole audience became enthu- 
siastic. ‘The service over, a friend who attended the meet- 
ing out. of curiosity and who gave us this information, was 


THE HEALING QUESTION 93 


near where the colored woman sat, and kept her eye on the 
woman. People were leaving and the healed woman also 
got up and walked cautiously towards the entrance to leave 
the building. There she halted. Finally our friend stepped 
up and asked her if she could do something for her. She 
requested to be helped to the street car. She was as blind 
as ever. Yet the next morning a glowing report appeared 
in a newspaper speaking of the miracle of a blind negress 
being made to see. 

One of the saddest accounts we have read is the following. 
It happened in Fresno, Calif., in 1922, when Mrs. McPherson 
held a campaign in that city. The report is given by a 
minister of the Gospel, who is reliable and whose word cannot 


be doubted. 


“An eye witness will make affidavit to the following: ‘A little girl, 
who wore a pair of glasses one-half of which was entirely black.’ I 
gathered that she was totally blind in one eye and almost blind in the 
other. I sat upon the stage very close to the whole procedure. While 
prayer was being made for her, the little girl, who appeared to be about 
11 years of age, wept and sobbed and writhed in her eagerness to secure 
the help that she had been led to expect. She left the platform and 
public claim was made by one of the workers that she had been healed, 
and the little girl verified the claim by nod of head given in reply to 
the question of the workers. An hour later, when the meeting was 
out, I noticed a small cluster of women near the platform. I thought 
I saw the blind little girl in their midst, so I asked my wife to go over 
and investigate and talk to her if necessary. She found the erstwhile 
‘cured’ girl flat on her face on the floor, sobbing, with shattered hopes 
and a breaking heart. Her disappointment was complete, and so was 
her disillusionment. The improved sight that she seemed to have 
had in the midst of the excitement on the platform had disappeared, 
and with it the hope of the little girl.” 


This is one of the awful results of these campaigns and the 
claims of these men and women. They raise the hopes of 
the unfortunates by their false reports of what happened 
to others. The sick do anything, give anything and profess 
anything as long as they also might be healed. They talk 
themselves into the assurance that they can be healed and 


94 THE HEALING QUESTION 


will be healed. When “‘the power’ comes upon them they 
think there has been a decided improvement. The assur- 
ance “‘you are healed,” a mere mental dictum of the healer, 
gives them a joyous hope. Then all at once the heart- 
breaking discovery, in spite of faith, in spite of the prayer, 
the oil and the laying on of hands, in spite of “‘the power” 
and the healer’s suggestion, there has been no healing. The 
momentary improvement lasted as long as the spell lasted. 
The assurance that the healing would be gradual did not 
materialize. Then followed despair. Victims, as we shall 
state later, died on account of the nervous strain, many 
more are today in insane asylums. Each and all of them 
constitute a pathetic human document in which tragedy 
has been wrought out in human tears and pain. The 
spiritual and mental tragedy overshadows the physical, for 
no disappointment touches a more anguishing note than the 
disappointment of faith, a broken belief in the Divine 
promises. ‘Those who have died, are only a few out of the 
great throng of suffering men and women, whose desire to 
become well and strong, and to know the joy of health, is 
taken advantage of by these men and women who claim 
Divine healing cures. To think that hundreds of the lame, 
the deaf, the blind and the dumb have been attracted by 
the false claims into hoping, when really there is no hope, 
is to draw a pitiful picture. Wickedness, in our estimation, 
is too mild a word for such tactics. 

One more case we cite. One of these healers labored in 
Oregon two years ago. ‘Two pastors of Eugene listened to 
Mr. Price relating the case of an Oregonian who suffered 
from cancer of the face. He declared that his face had been 
eaten away so that the teeth were exposed. The healer 
said he had prayed over this case and the man was healed. 
“There is now a little red spot left where the cancer was, 


THE HEALING QUESTION 95 


and that is fast disappearing. If you want to see for your- 
self, go and see.” The two preachers drove out to the 
man’s home. When the wife heard of their mission she 
said, “Yes, Hallelujah, my husband is healed.” He ap- 
peared on the scene with a horrible, vile smelling cancer 
which covered part of his face, against which he held a towel. 
He also said “Yes, Hallelujah, 1 am healed! Price prayed 
for me.”’* 

To compare these works and results with the healing 
miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ is next to blasphemy. 

In the third place misleading reports, fraudulent cases of 
healing and sinful exaggerations characterize these modern 
healing campaigns. 

More information as to the tragedies which follow. Before 
us is a copy of a committee which investigated the supposed 
cures in the C. 8. Price campaign in Vancouver, B. C. The 
committee consisted of eleven ministers of various denom- 
inations, eight well known physicians, all Christians, and 
nearly all of them specialists, three university professors 
and a widely known member of the legal profession. They 
took months for the most painstaking investigation. ‘The 
committee found that this healer uses hypnotic suggestions. 
Briefly stated the committee investigated 350 cases of those 
who had been anointed and who professed healing as a 
result. Five cases of healing of certain nervous diseases 
were found; none of which had any kind of an organic dis- 
ease. It must be emphasized that they were all functional 
cases, that is, in the absence of the structural changes, which 
always accompany organic disease, they were amenable to 
mental treatment. Many similar cures are also reported 
in the records of “shell shock,” and other similar cases 


*See W. P. White on ““McPhersonism.”’ 


96 THE HEALING QUESTION 


treated in recent years in various hospitals of Great Britain 
and Canada. 


Thirty-nine of those anointed and pronounced cured have 
since died. It is obvious, the committee says, that if these 
persons had been cured of their diseases, one-tenth of them 
would not, in the natural course of events, have died in the 
ensuing six months. Five persons out of the 350 have 
become insane during the past six months. ‘That is, of the 
350 persons, who claimed healing, only five were cured of 
functional disorders, thirty-nine died, five became insane, 
and the remaining 301 remained sick, though they had been 
hypnotized into the belief that they were cured. We quote 
a few cases from the report: 


Case B. Blind soldier was a faithful attendant at the Arena meet- 
ings. He was anointed and assured that he would receive his sight. 
So strong was his belief that, although at the time of the meetings all 
arrangements had been made for giving him vocational training course 
under the department of the S. C. R., he withdrew from this on the 
ground that it would be unnecessary, because he was about to regain 
his sight. 

It is hardly necessary to say that his blindness remains unchanged. 
In addition, he is suffering from severe depression as a result of failure 
to receive any benefit. His obsession seems to be that his failure is 
due to his lack of faith. His condition has given rise to very grave 
anxiety among his friends. 


At one of the institutions of the city, a large number of cases investi- 
gated revealed a large proportion of patients whose hopes of healing 
proving vain, passed into very marked depression. 

A considerable number of cases of blind children also came to the 
committee’s notice, whose hopes were built up to a very high pitch, 
only to prove vain. In some cases this led them to question their belief 
in the love of God and undid what religious faith had been previously 
built up in their lives. 

Case U. This patient, suspecting tubercular condition of the lungs, 
a condition never really confirmed by a physician, attended the Arena 
meetings in search of healing. He seems to have had a mental obses- 
sion rather than a real physical ailment, though there were some grounds 
for his fears. He attended the meetings in the first week, was anointed, 
pronounced healed and testified publicly to this effect the next day. 
An unrestrainable state of mental excitement followed and he died a 
week later from the exhaustion of acute mania. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 97 


Case V. Girl, aged 13, crippled by automobile accident. Had not 
walked for five years. Taken to the Arena in steel braces from chin 
to toes, anointed, but not healed, it was said, on account of father’s 
lack of faith. Father attended many meetings and professed conver- 
sion. Finally the child received a white card and was anointed again 
on the last day for children. No results. The father attended other 
services after at the Arena meetings, where the faith healing campaign 
was continued, frequently going under the power. The condition of 
the child remained unchanged. The father, the bread-winner of the 
family, became violently insane, and is now one of the hopeless inmates 
of an asylum. 


Surely here we must say “By their fruits ye shall know 
them.’ Such spurious claims and false reports are not of 
God, nor are these pretended cures. One of the saddest 
cases, illustrating the vicious powers at work in these cam- 
paigns of hypnotism, is the case of a minister, the late Rev. 
Reginald Edwards of Kelowna, who was one of those pro- 
nounced cured by Price during his healing meetings in Van- 
couver. The widow and the superintendent of a sanatorium, 
Dr. J. K. McKay issued a statement of the case, which should 
serve as a warning to others. We print it. He was a 
sufferer from incipient tuberculosis and thought he might be 
benefitted by the meetings. 

“He came to Vancouver as a minister deeply interested in 
this evangelistic campaign, to witness and study the con- 
versions and healings reported to be brought about under 
Mr. Price’s ministry. He was profoundly impressed, and 
went before Mr. Price on the arena platform to be healed of 
the conditions which impaired his general good health. 

“He was anointed by Mr. Price and he collapsed on the 
platform. He told me afterwards that he did not lose com- 
plete consciousness, but he did not know that he had fallen 
down. It was apparent to his friends who saw him that he 
came under some powerful psychic influence. 

“Tn a few moments he came around and he stated that he 
was healed. He was absolutely sincere and was moved to 


98 THE HEALING QUESTION 


a high pitch of religious fervor by his experience. Under the 
impulse of this suggestion he attended all of the Price 
meetings and took an active part. He was most enthusiastic 
and was quite carried away. 

‘“‘As a result he overtaxed his strength and a week ago last 
Tuesday suffered a complete nervous breakdown. He 
became daily worse and was taken to Dr. McKay’s san- 
atorium, where he died on Wednesday morning. 

“Dr. McKay stated that he had no personal experience 
with Mr. Edwards’s previous medical history, but that the 
statement by Mr. Welsh was entirely consistent with his 
observation of the case. 

“Violent over-excitement and over-strain of the nerves was 
the cause of his death,’ said Dr. McKay. 

“Reginald Edwards was 41 years old at his death and left 
a widow and four young children, the eldest ten years and 
the youngest less than a year old.” 

The campaigns held by Mrs. McPherson in Fresno, Calif. 
produced a rich harvest of evil results. The deputy in 
charge of the insane patients at the Fresno county jail is 
authority for the following: 


“I have never noticed so many insane patients coming from one 
source.” This is a matter of public record. The public can investigate 
for themselves. “Eight or ten persons afflicted with mental derange- 
ment on the subject of religion, and the subject of the McPherson 
meetings, have been cared for at the county jail. Many of these have 
been taken to Stockton, where I learn from the superintendent of the 
hospital for the insane that ‘I had no idea how many had been taken 
to private sanitariums resultant from this same cause, or source.’ 
Among those afflicted thus are Mrs. R. of Selma, committed to Stock- 
ton insane asylum. Mrs. A. R., of near Fresno, committed to the 
same institution, and died there February 9. Leaves a husband and 

hree sons. & FE ,P., now in the Stockton institution. Wife runs a 
grocery store hers now. Mr. E. E., of Parlier, California, became a 
raving maniac. Nowina local sanitarium. In the case of Mrs. A. R., 
of near Fresno, who died February 9 in a Stockton institution, who 
was 43 years old, her physician makes the following statement: There 
had been no history of mental disorder with her before, and that prior 
to her affliction she had been in the best of health.” 


THE HEALING QUESTION 99 


“By their fruits ye shall know them.” 

Mrs. McPherson held a monster campaign in Denver. A 
marvelous report was issued according to which hundreds 
were anointed and healed. We visited Denver a few months 
after the city was literally swept by an unbalanced religious 
enthusiasm. Some of the leading Christian workers assured 
us that not a single genuine healing had come to light and 
the thousands of converts claimed by the woman could not 
be located. A Denver physician issued a lengthy statement 
as to his observations from which we quote: 


“T am fortunate in having personal knowledge of a number of ‘cures’ 
wrought by the evangelist. One young man suffering from tubercu- 
losis left his bed at the county hospital on the evening of June 22d 
and attended the revival service. From the platform he publicly pro- 
claimed himself cured of his disease. After the service he returned to 
the hospital and a few days later developed tubercular meningitis. 
He died July 5th, thirteen days after the miracle of healing. 

“A young woman with tuberculosis of the hip joint got up from her 
bed, removed a loose-fitting body cast and proclaimed that she was 
cured, Ten minutes later I saw her in an ante- -room, lying on a couch 
in complete collapse. 

“A patient of mine with early locomotor ataxia went to the meeting 
to be cured. He surrendered his cane amid wild cheers from the audi- 
ence. ‘The next day he returned to my office with a new cane. 

““A retired pastor proclaimed that he was cured of lameness. He is 
still drawing compensation for this disability. ‘Thus it would seem that 
he must be lame, either physically or morally. 

*“An old gentleman with left-sided paralysis went on the platform to be 
healed. In his zeal he waved his right hand to the audience, which 
hailed the miracle with prolonged applause. 

“Such are a few of the ‘cures’ which have come to my attention.” 


The same is true of the Bosworth Campaigns. A pastor 
in Toronto where they held a big healing campaign writes: 
“Over 7,000, it is said, went up to be healed. Some that 
were advertised in the bulletins as having been healed are 
dead, and at least three of those who were miraculously 
cured died before the campaign closed.” A well known 
Christian worker in St. Paul, Minn., told us that one of the 
star cases of the Bosworths was a man healed of tuber- 


100 THE HEALING QUESTION 


culosis. A tract was written about his wonderful case, like 
the woman who lives without kidneys. He died a short time 
afterwards from the disease which had been miraculously 
healed. Yet the tract, telling of his supposed cure, we were 
told, was kept in circulation for over two years. 

The San Francisco Chronicle contained a lengthy report 
of the miraculous healing of a child, a victim of infantile 
paralysis. The anointing, the prayer, the smiling child, 
the sweet words spoken by Mrs. McPherson were all given 
in detail. Says the report: “‘Now, set her down on the 
floor, I think she can stand. Hold her little hand for the 
child must begin to walk. Seeifshe can’t. All of the cloud 
of anxiety had passed from the father’s face. He smiled 
confidently as he placed the child on the floor. The audience 
was silent and expectant. The child smiled as she stood up. 
The audience applauded. She stood. She walked. ‘Tears 
coursed down the father’s face. He led the child down the 
length of the platform, then down the incline, at the bottom 
of which the young mother waited, her face effused in in- 
describable gladness, her eyes shining through her tears. 
Taking hold of her child’s other hand the parents walked 
down the long aisle. They kept right on as if they had been 
alone in their own peaceful home.” Very touching! But 
they made a bad mistake in giving the name and address of 
the father in Oakland. We wrote him a letter and give his 
answer, “Our son (not daughter) was injured at birth and 
is not a victim of infantile paralysis. He is now two and 
one-half years old and cannot walk, but has made wonderful 
development and will be quite normal in all respects in a 
year or so. He was treated twice by Mrs. McPherson, but we 
can notice no change or improvement as a result thereof.” 
Further comment is not needed. 

We could fill many more pages with other cases. In a 


THE HEALING QUESTION 101 


city where such a campaign had been held, brethren told us 
the reaction was well nigh a disaster for the spiritual con- 
ditions. We challenged the people to bring to our notice one 
authenticated case of healing of the many hundreds, which it 
was said, had taken place. No case was ever produced. 

The purely hypnotic process in some of these healing 
campaigns is so self-evident that it is strange that so few 
recognize it. We give the words of a keen observer of the 
procedure by Mr. C. S. Price. 


“As the anointed sufferer fell back into the waiting hands of the 
attendant minister into a cataleptic or hypnotic trance he or she went 
down with the name of Jesus and the authoritative pronouncement, 
‘You are healed’! ‘She’s got it’! in their ears—a tremendous climax 
to the whole train of suggestion, exalted fervor and ecstatic hope, power- 
fully calculated to bring about the well known results of hypnotic 
suggestion and psychotherapy. No wonder some of them afterwards 
spoke of the marvelous visions or great religious experience they had 
while they lay entranced on the floor. Moving about amongst their 
prostrate forms, studying the situation, one could see in the violent 
tremors, the rigidity of limbs, the fixed, glassy stare and monotonous 
repetition of sentence prayer, the well defined results of hypnotic sug- 
gestion. 


_ And the same brother describes the tragedy of the whole 
unscriptural farce in a way which we fully endorse. 


“Those who collapsed here and there in the audience during the sing- 
ing or sermon he declared ‘under the power,’ and advised against any 
attempts to revive them, though some lay for hours in the dark after 
all were gone.” 

‘IT think of that father who came a long distance to receive his sight, 
so confident that he would see his little boy next day, for the first 
time in his life, that he could scarcely go to bed for talking of the joy 
that would be his. And I see him going home in the depths of despair 
as blind as ever, and darker than ever in soul. I think of that sweet 
young woman with the shortened, distorted limb, whose faith was 
so great, that she brought a new pair of slippers to wear back home 
when her foot was restored as whole as the other, who lay on that 
platform half an hour, and still has the deformity she had before. [| 
think of that other girl who was positively told she was cured of her 
goitre, whose mother 1s now desperately irying to save her faith in God 
who did not remove it. I think of the long line of children I saw 
paraded across that platform for the healing of lame legs, and para- 
lyzed arms and deaf ears and injured brains and other pitiful diseases, 


102 THE HEALING QUESTION 


and not one of them gaining the slightest benefit any one could see 
—and then, as I think of the shattered hopes and blighted faith of 
hundreds like them in the days to come, I say, “God help us! for thts 
is the greatest tragedy that has struck this city in all tts history.’ ” 

They are also responsible for other tragedies. There 
have been cases of cancer which were curable in their incipi- 
ent state, for cancer at a certain time is curable. Instead of 
going to a surgeon the sufferers went to a healing meeting, 
were anointed and pronounced cured of cancer, for let us 
remember again that Bosworth says that it is just as easy 
to be cured of cancer as to have your sins forgiven. ‘The 
growth increased and finally friends and relatives prevailed 
to have the afflicted one submit to an examination by a sur- 
geon, who declared that the case was now hopeless, whereas 
six months before, the life might have been saved. 


In the fourth place we mention briefly their fanatical rejec- - 
tion of physical means. 


The rejection of God-given means in case of sickness is 
fanatical and irrational. No one believes more in the 
omnipotence of God, and in the almighty power of the Man 
of the Cross, enthroned at the right hand of God, than the 
writer of this volume. There is nothing too hard for the 
Lord. ‘To restore eyes over which a cataract has formed is 
just as easy to Him as to raise one from among the dead. 
But does God display the power He has in either case? 
The Lord can raise the dead as He raised them when on 
earth, for His power remains unchanged. Let all the faith 
healers pray over a corpse and believing demand the restora- 
tion of life. There will be no answer. Bring the man who 
is becoming blind through cataracts on both eyes, and let 
faith healers anoint him and pray over him; there will be no 
answer. Why not? Because God has given some of His 
creatures the skill to take a thin knife and then remove, by a 


THE HEALING QUESTION 103 


delicate operation, the film which covers the eyeball, and 
under the gracious blessing of God the diminishing sight is 
restored. Extreme faith healers will say that this is not of 
God, and all doctors, surgeons and medicines are of the devil. 
But the same men and women visit dentists, have teeth 
filled and wear false teeth. God certainly has the power to 
mend decaying teeth; He can replace decayed teeth by a 
set of new teeth. Like others, faith healers go to oculists, 
and wear glasses. When divine healers break limbs they 
use a surgeon to set and bandage the broken arm or leg. 
So they are forced to use means and yet they teach that the 
use of means is of the devil, that it is unbelief to consult a 
physician. A practitioner confided to us that a certain 
faith-healer had visited him when in pain and sought relief 
through his prescriptions at the same time requesting 
secrecy, and offering a double fee. What hypocrisy! ‘Then 
before large audiences these men and women will stand up 
and denounce doctors and medicine, branding them as 
satanic inventions! 

Let us go a little deeper. In nature, God has manifested 
not only His omnipotence, but also His wisdom. God is 
omniscient. He knew before the foundation of the world 
that His creature, man, would become a sinner. Before 
the foundation of the world God also provided the remedy 
for sin in the gift of His only Begotten Son. He knew what 
the physical results of sin would be. In His beneficence He 
made provision for these needs, and these provisions He 
deposited, in His infinite wisdom and kindness, in minerals, 
herbs, shrubs and various plants from the tiny moss to some 
stately tree. A wonderful lesson is written in nature of 
God’s wisdom and kindness. But a faith-healer will say, 
if such is the case, why does not the Bible teach us the use 
of these herbs, minerals and plants? Why is there nothing 


104 THE HEALING QUESTION 


said about the use of these supposed God-given means? 
We bring a counter question. Why does not the Bible 
teach astronomy, geology, chemistry or other sciences? 
There is a very simple answer to this question. ‘The Creator 
has given to man the capacity to search out His creation, 
to discover its hidden secrets by using his marvelous mental 
powers. What a disaster it would have been if the Creator _ 
had put into the hands of man complete and perfect text- 
books dealing infallibly with astronomy, biology, botany, 
geology and chemistry! God expects man to search for 
himself. Science is to be truly the hand-maid of faith and 
lead through its discoveries and inventions to the praise and 
glory of His holy Name. As God has given us in the Bible 
no text book on astronomy or chemistry, so He has not given 
us a Materia Medica, but has left it to man to discover His 
kind provisions for the physical needs in sickness. The use 
of these means is fully indicated in the Word of God (Is. 
EXxV1ii:21; 1 Tim. v:23; the use of oil, etc.) 

One of the greatest medical scientists was Dr. Hahneman, 
the discoverer of the law “‘similis similibus curantur,” like 
cures like. This great principle has brought God’s miracles 
to light. Minerals, plants, herbs and shrubs which contain 
deadly poisons which, when taken in their natural state, 
attack certain parts of the human body with disastrous 
results, are reduced by dilution or trituration to almost 
atomic quantities. These infinitesimal particles are taken up 
by the human system and carried to the seat of disease and 
often cure what the drug, in the natural state, produces. 
The homeopathic Materia Medica and its scientific demon- 
stration is a wonderful evidence of God’s wisdom and God’s 
kindness in nature. To give but one simple illustration of 
a hundred others. It has been demonstrated that Belladonna 
produces, if taken internally, symptoms very much like 


THE HEALING QUESTION 105 


Scarlet Fever. Hence it has been proven that Belladonna 
taken in minute doses not only cures this dread children’s 
disease, but is a prophylactic, by which hundreds of children 
have been spared in epidemics. It seems to us the principle 
“like cures like” is indicated in the healing of the Israelites 
by looking at the brazen serpent. Fiery, poisonous serpents 
were destroying the Israelites; a brazen serpent, which had 
no poison, looked at, led to the cure. 

We cannot speak of other wonder-things in nature which 
ameliorate man’s physical suffering in sickness. We cannot 
speak of the blessings of antitoxin, which has saved thousands 
of children from Diphtheria; nor can we enlarge upon the 
blessings of anasthetics, or the achievements of the surgeon’s 
knife, by which many thousands of lives have been saved. 

Extreme faith-healers charge that doctors, surgeons, any 
kind of remedies or means, are all of the devil. If the healing 
properties of minerals and plants are the work of the devil, 
then that being has introduced disease, and at the same time 
created remedies to relieve sickness and pain. The rejection 
of means 1s fanatically sinful. God’s kindness in providing 
these means is ignored and maligned. ‘The results are often 
disastrous. ‘The courts of our land record numerous cases 
of “Christian Scientists”? who, in practicing their mad-house 
theory, permitted sick children to go without any medical 
attention whatever. They died. Divine healers say that 
‘Christian Scientists” do not believe right, that divine heal- 
ing is on a higher plane. Practically the same principle 
which underlies “‘Christian Science” is the principle of faith- 
healing, and faith-healers pay the same price for not using 
God-appointed means. 

A certain Missionary Society, which believes in “‘divine 
healing,” sent out missionaries to fever stricken districts of 
Africa. They went, trusting the Lord, and refused to take 


106 THE HEALING QUESTION 


the chemical extraction of the Peruvian bark, known as 
quinine, the remedy which counteracts malaria infection. 
A number of them died sacrificing their lives for an unscrip- 
tural and insane principle. Other missionaries of regular 
church-societies, took quinine and lived. We understand 
that the Board of the divine-healing society has given per- 
mission to use quinine, not as a medicine, but as daily food. 
What a farce! That great missionary-evangelist, whom the 
writer knew intimately, Bishop William Taylor, had in his 
company of missionaries penetrating the interior of Africa, 
a young man who was an obstinate believer in faith-healing. 
He refused fanatically to take any medicine. We give the 
last entry in his diary. “I haven’t the fever, but a weak 
feeling. But I take the promise, ‘He giveth power to the 
faint,’ and I do receive the fact.”” The testimony of the 
physician in the party as to the last conversation with this 
divine healing fanatic, is as follows: “Charlie, your temper- 
ature is 105, and pulse 130; normal is 98; the dividing 
line between life and death is 103. You are now dying. 
If you do not take something to break this fever, it will 
surely kill you.’? He answered, ‘‘Well then I die; for I 
won’t take any medicine.”* And he died. We could add 
other cases, some of which came under our own personal 
observation, when persons died, refusing medical help, 
because they trusted the Lord. That is not faith but pre- 
sumption. Divine healing suicides is the proper name for 
such, 

In concluding this examination we call attention to the 
demand of divine healers that faith is imperative for healing 
and give an explanation of certain cures which are effected. 

All divine healers make healing dependent on faith, 
declaring this as a Scriptural principle and demand. When 


*Dr. Buckley on “Faith Healing,” page 17. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 107 


there is failure, it is on account of a lack of faith. They 
teach that those sick, when our Lord was on earth, were 
healed only through faith in Him. ‘The wife of a well-known 
American politician and religious lecturer, who is an invalid, 
said, “If I only had the right faith, I also would be healed.” 
Faith in the possibility of healing, faith in the healer as 
medium through whom the cure is effected, and faith in a 
supernatural power to accomplish the healing, is declared 
to be eminently necessary to effect a cure. But no such faith 
is connected with many of the miracles of healing in the New 
Testament. Did the servant of the centurion have faith? 
_ His master believed, but we do not know that his servant 
had faith also. ‘The father of the child which was possessed 
had faith; the son in the condition he was in had probably 
no faith. ‘The man with the withered hand in the synagogue 
belonged to His enemies. ‘The impotent man healed in the 
fifth chapter of the Gospel of John did not even know who 
Christ was; the blind man healed in the ninth chapter of 
John’s Gospel did not know Christ at all, when he was healed, 
for he called Him ‘‘a man” and later ‘“‘a prophet.” Nothing 
is said of the faith of the vast multitudes who were repeatedly 
healed by Him. The case of His home-town is cited, that 
on account of their unbelief He did not many mighty works 
there, but He did some mighty works there in spite of their 
unbelief. And what about the servant of the high priest? 
When his ear had been severed, he certainly did not appeal 
to Christ to heal him; he had no faith whatever. Nor were 
the Apostles limited to the faith of those who were healed. 
The lame man healed by Peter (Acts iii) expected alms and 
not healing. He had no faith. Nothing is said about the 
faith of the multitudes which brought their sick out of the 
surrounding towns to be healed by the Apostles. No faith 
was manifested by the relatives of those who died and whom 


108 THE HEALING QUESTION 


Christ raised from the dead; yet divine healers have said, if 
we had the faith, the dead would still be raised. 

Now this self-confessed limitation of the faith-healers 1s 
an evidence that their power 1s not the power of God, for the 
power of God knows no such limitation. On the other hand, 
this demand of faith, this strong, positive mental attitude of 
trust, that their healing is the will of God, that the anointing 
and the prayer of the man or woman, who has the reputation 
of being used in the accomplishment of the will of God in 
healing, explains some of the cures of functional disorders. 

Do we believe that certain cures are taking place in these 
healing meetings? We certainly do. In our next chapter 
we show what resources the believer has in sickness and that 
God does heal if it pleases Him. Let us then look now at the. 
cures which take place. In the first place there are hundreds 
of people in the world who imagine all kinds of sickness, 
and many actually worry themselves into a disease, producing 
different symptoms by their nervous agitation and fears. 
A little cough, which comes from a mere throat irritation, 
is put down as incipient tuberculosis; a stitch in the back 
or pain under the shoulder, is the beginning of pneumonia; 
palpitation of the heart, irregular or intermittent pulse, 
brought on by injudicious eating, is put down as a serious 
heart affection; a swelling, a common boil must be a cancer. 
Furthermore, there are many forms of disease which are 
purely hysterical. We quote a medical authority: ‘“There 
are many cases of hysterical lameness, deafness, blindness, 
aphonia, supposed cancer of the stomach, tumors, goitres, 
etc., which yield to the stimulus of intense emotion. ‘These 
various hysterical manifestations are often brought on by 
shock or emotional stress, and they disappear under like 
conditions.”” Women are especially subject to diseases, 
or supposed diseases, which originate in hysteria. That is 


THE HEALING QUESTION 109 


why seventy-five per cent. of the supposed cures are per- 
formed on women. Having read extensively on this subject, 
we are prepared to say that underneath all faith-healing, 
as carried on in divine healing systems, the healings of other 
cults, such as Christian Science, Spiritism, certain meta- 
physical cults, as well as underneath the healings reported 
by “the King’s touch,” the cures which take place at the 
shrines of Roman and Greek Catholicism, there are certain 
laws of nature, the most prominent of which is the power of 
mind over matter. The concentration of the mind with 
faith into “something” produces powerful effects. It has 
been proven that the law of concentration operates often 
efficiently in acute diseases. It operates frequently with 
instantaneous rapidity upon nervous diseases, or upon any 
condition capable of being modified by direct action, through 
the nervous or circulatory system. Physicians, who make 
use of this law of the mind, have wrought cures in diseases of 
accumulation, such as dropsy and tumors. Rheumatism, 
‘sciatica, gout, neuralgia, contractions of the joints, and other 
inflammatory conditions, have disappeared through the 
assertion of the mind over matter. Latent energy is de- 
veloped through mental stimulus, which opens the way to 
a cure; 

The late Dr. James M. Buckley, for many years editor of 
the New York Christian Advocate, wrote an excellent volume 
of research covering faith-healing, Christian Science and 
kindred phenomena. After citing different authorities and 
the cures of different systems, including faith-healing, he 
reaches the following conclusion: “We find that in comparison 
with the Mormons, Spiritualists, Mind Curers, Roman 
Catholics, Mesmerizers, the Protestant Faith Healers can 
accomplish as much, but no more; that they have the same 
limitations as to diseases they cannot heal, and injuries they 


110 THE HEALING QUESTION 


cannot repair.’ Then he adds, what we have already 
expressed, that “the claims of Faith Healers, technically 
so called, are effectually discredited.”’ We quote him. 

“‘In examining the healing works both of Christ and the 
Apostles, it appears there is not a uniform law that the sick 
should exercise faith, and that it was not necessary that their 
friends should exercise it, nor that either they or their friends 
should do so. Sometimes the sick alone believed; at others, 
their friends believed and they knew nothing about it; 
again both the sick and their friends believed, and on some 
occasions neither the sick nor their friends, believed. No 
account of failure on the part of Christ or of the Apostles 
after His ascension to cure any diseasecan befound. Neither 
is there a syllable concerning any relapse or the danger of 
such a thing, nor any cautions to the cured, ‘not to mind 
sensations, or that ‘sensations are a test of faith,’ nor any 
other such quackery, in the New Testament. Claims of 
Christian faith healers to supernatural powers are discredited 
by three facts: 

““(1) They exhibit no supremacy over pagans, spiritualists, 
mind curers, hypnotists, etc. 

(2) They cannot parallel the mighty works that Christ 
produced, nor the works of the Apostles. 

“(3) All that they really accomplish can be paralleled 
without assuming any supernatural cause, and a formula 
can be constructed out of the elements of the human mind 
which will give as high average results as their Prayens 
and anointings. ‘< 

“That formula in its lowest form is ‘concentrated sete 
If to this be added reverence, whether for the true and ever- 
living God, false gods, spirits, the operator, witches, mag- 
netism, electricity, or simple unnamed} mystery, the effect 
is increased greatly.... Passes, anointings with oil, are useful 


THE HEALING QUESTION 111 


only as they produce concentration of attention, reverence 
and confident expectancy. Those whose reputation or 
personal force of thought, manner, or speech can produce 
these mental states, may dispense with them all.” 

We are persuaded that most divine healing campaigns 
are a form of mass-hypnotism, and the power which is present 
is not the power of God. The simple fact that men and 
women who were touched became insane, is sufficient evi- 
dence that our heavenly Father, who is kindness towards 
the suffering, does not supply this power. The power of 
hypnotism was too strong for certain weak minds, and as a 
result they became unbalanced. We have information 
from an insane asylum in Oregon, where a number of victims 
of one of these campaigns are housed. The informant 
tells us that they sing and pray, and with the next breath 
they curse, and use the vilest language. Other matters 
we pass by, but call attention to the fact, that these ‘‘divine 
healers” obtain large sums of money. through their pre- 
tensions. One, who but a few years ago was practically 
penniless, has accumulated wealth in real estate amounting 
to over a half of a million dollars. For a few weeks “‘healing”’ 
another received over twenty thousand dollars. ‘“‘By 
their fruits ye shall know them.” 


CHAPTER VIII 
The Believer and Sickness 


All faith-healers make much of a promise given to Israel. 
“If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord 
thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and 
wilt give ear to the commandments, and keep all His stat- 
utes, I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have 
brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth 
thee” (Exod. xv:26). The use of this passage by New Testa- 
ment believers, who are not under the law, but under grace, 
is incorrect. Grace makes no such conditions. Upon this 
misappropriated promise much of their teaching as to sick- 
ness in the believer’s life is founded. In a nutshell it is this,- 
“Obey the Lord, fulfill the conditions of the text and the 
Lord will keep His promise, none of the diseases of Egypt 
will come upon you. He will be the Lord thy Healer.” 
The “‘Christian and Missionary Alliance,” and all the other 
faith-healing systems, use this expression also. Obedience 
yielded, and there is no need for a child of God to be sick. 
Perfect health is the result of perfect obedience. But obe- 
dience to what? If we go back under the law then we also 
must obey that law. The terms used in Exod. xv:26 “‘com- 
mandments” and “‘statutes” mean all the laws which the 
Lord gave to His people Israel. The dietary laws are in- 
cluded, as well as the many ceremonial washings, the laws 
governing dress and also the Sabbath laws. In order to 
fulfill the condition a believer should keep Israel’s Sabbath, 
the seventh day, and not the first day of the week, keep it 
down to the minute things commanded, as, for instance, 
not kindling a fire, or lighting a candle or a lamp. Andjif 


112 


THE HEALING QUESTION 113 


one of these laws is broken the threatened curse must be 
taken. But even if a Christian believer would be so foolish 
as to attempt to keep literally the commandments and 
statutes given to Israel, he would find out that the promise 
does not hold good in the present dispensation. 

The reasoning followed by Divine healers in connection 
with this passage is astonishing. They say “a believer may 
enjoy perfect health if he obeys the Lord. If a child falls 
sick it is the evidence that he has sinned and lives in sin.” 
We quote from a volume which deals with “Divine healing.” 

“If we could now put the question directly to the Lord 
Himself, and He should say to us as He said to Moses, at 
the healed waters of Marah, ‘I am the Lord thy Healer,’ 
His answer would not be more conclusive than it is in His 
written Word. Indeed, He is as clearly revealed in His 
office as the healer of the body, as He is as the Saviour of 
the soul. Oh, how blessed! continued freedom from bodily 
maladies, second only to freedom from that most hateful 
thing, sin, for the cure of which it is promised as a help. 
One of the things in which the wisdom of God is seen in the 
law of health is this: . . . it simply binds Him not to put 
disease upon His children if they do hearken to His voice. In 
the law of health He has promised preservation in health, 
upon condition of hearkening diligently to His voice and 
obeying Him.” Other “healers” are even more pronounced 
and put it down as one of the Gospel-truths, that if a believer 
trusts the Lord, he will be exempt from all sickness, and if he 
is ill and his prayer, or the anointing with oil, does not result 
in his healing, there must be some sin in his life. Now if 
these statements are scriptural, it follows that God is forced 
by His fidelity to His promises to heal the sick in answer 
to faith, and hence a believer may be assured that His power 
will be used in response to prayer in every case alike, in any 


114 THE HEALING QUESTION 


sickness and at any time. It also follows that if a believer 
is obedient, and so long as he is acting in obedience, he is 
safe and secure against any sickness and disease, and if 
there is physical disorder in a believer it is prima facie evi- 
dence of sin committed and unconfessed. 

But some of the men who contended for this, believed it, 
taught it to thousands, published books on it, were taken 
sick and died. The late A. B. Simpson was affected men- 
tally and physically for at least two years. Some of his 
followers actually asserted that he must have departed from 
the pathway of full consecration, otherwise he would have 
been healed. When another leader of “faith-healing” was 
carried off in the midst of his “‘healing’’ activities, the late 
Dr. James H. Brookes made some pertinent and sane re- 
marks, which we quote: “He was assured that ‘God’s power 
will be used directly in every case of sickness alike, in little 
or great attacks’; and it is obvious that age cannct thwart 
the divine purpose, nor defeat divine promises. If the 
prayer of faith may baffle disease when the sick are forty 
years old, it ought to do the same when they are seventy, 
or eighty, or ninety, and so on indefinitely. According to 
the theory that faith may always count on the power of 
the Almighty to heal, and that ‘it binds Him not to put 
diseases upon His children if they do hearken to His voice,’ 
they ought to live on, unless their faith or their faithfulness 
utterly fails. It may be replied that this would be in direct 
conflict with the plain statement of the Scripture, ‘It is 
appointed unto men once to die’; but it is appointed unto 
the young as well as unto the old to die, and the prayer of 
faith can no more set aside God’s appointment concerning 
the former than in the case of the latter. When the time 
fixed by the eternal decree was reached, the brother fell 
asleep, as all faith healers do, notwithstanding their theory.” 


THE HEALING QUESTION 115 


The deductions from the quoted text are unscriptural, un- 
reasonable and cruel. Thousands upon thousands of God’s 
well-beloved children, who are suffering in their bodies, 
suffering in sweet submission to His will, are branded by this 
erroneous use of the text, as willful sinners,'who obstinately 
continue in sin, and therefore continue to be sick. Some of 
the mighty men of God, the chosen instruments of God the 
Holy Spirit, men before whom the present day “‘faith-healers” 
are mere pigmies, were afflicted, like the greatest of all 
instruments, the Apostle Paul, with a thorn in the flesh. 
They had infirmities and suffered from various diseases. 
They too cried to the Lord for deliverance and received the 
same answer Paul received. ‘To charge them with outright 
disobedience, and unbelief as the source of their weak bodies, 
and their continued infirmities is unspeakably harsh and 
cruel. We think of the thousands of “shut-ins.”” ‘They are 
living in the closest possible communion with the Lord, and 
by their gentleness, meekness, their whole-hearted and un- 
complaining resignation to the will of God, manifest the all- 
sufficiency of His grace to sustain and keep; they glorify Him 
a thousand times more than all the pretending faith-healers 
with their sensational methods. Milton in the sonnet he 
wrote on his blindness says “‘they also serve who only stand 
and wait.” ‘The ministry of praise and the prayer of inter- 
cession which is daily practiced by men and women who are 
paralyzed, blind and otherwise afflicted, who have suffered 
thus for many years, fills heaven with its fragrance. In 
visiting these sufferers and beholding their patience and their 
spirit of thanksgiving and praise, one feels the presence of 
the Lord, as perhaps nowhere else on this side of heaven. No 
wonder that their chambers of patient suffering have been 
the birth-places of many souls. Nor do we forget the blessed 
songs which have come out of the night of their suffering 


116 THE HEALING QUESTION 


and deprivations. Besides John Milton, who like the 
nightingale, sang the sweetest, when night came, and his 
physical vision left him, we mention George Matheson and 
Fanny Crosby, both blind. Words fail us in denouncing this 
vicious dogmatic assertion, that Christ died for our diseases, 
that Christ is the healer of the body, as He is the healer of the 
soul, that a Christian does not need to be ill and if he is 
sick it is because he lives in sin and does not obey the Lord. 

The New Testament teaches that salvation, at the present 
time, is confined to the spiritual part of man. ‘The believer’s 
body has the promise of future redemption. The believer’s 
body is a mortal, a death-doomed body, on account of sin; 
it is called “the body of our humiliation” (Philippians 11:21, 
literal rendering). As stated before, when we read in Romans 
vili:11 of “the quickening of our mortal bodies” it does not 
mean a present quickening, but the future quickening in 
resurrection. ‘The Apostle speaks in the same chapter of the 
earnest expectation of the creature waiting for the mani- 
festation of the sons of God and ‘“‘that the whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 
vili:19-22). The Spirit of God adds: ‘‘And not only they, 
but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, 
even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the 
adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”’ The redemp- 
tion of the body is future. That redemption means deliver- 
ance from its present conditions, the results of sin, from the 
present limitations, and it also means a glorified body, for 
corruption must put on incorruption (those who will be raised 
from the dead), and this mortal must put on immortality 
(those believers, who will be changed in a moment, when the 
Lord comes; 1 Thessalonians iv:17). 

Practically speaking the body of the child of God does not 
differ now from the body of the unbeliever, though the Holy 


THE HEALING QUESTION BL? 


Spirit dwells in the body of the believer. Believers contract 
violent diseases, suffer from blindness, deafness and other 
afflictions, just like the unbeliever does. ‘There is no differ- 
ence in the physical pain in the believer’s body and the pain 
an unbeliever suffers. If our Lord does not come soon every 
living child of God will sooner or later fall victim to a disease, 
or suffer from old age as the unbeliever suffers, and will die as 
the unbeliever dies. His body will be buried like the un- 
believer’s body is buried. ‘The same corruption which seizes 
upon the body of the unbeliever also seizes upon the body of 
the Saint of God. Only a knave or a fool can dispute these 
facts. 

But we must not forget that the New Testament has much 
to say about the believer’s body, though that body does not 
differ physically from the body of the unbeliever. The be- 
liever is to present his body as a living sacrifice unto God 
(Romans xii:1). He is to yield the members of his body as 
instruments of righteousness unto God, and make these 
members servants to righteousness unto holiness (Romans 
vi:13, 19). He is exhorted to remember that his body is the 
temple of the Holy Spirit, that he is bought with a price and 
“therefore to glorify God” in the body as well as in the spirit, 
which are God’s (1 Corinthians vi:19-20). The body is to be 
kept under subjection, that is to be kept as a captive 
(1 Corinthians ix:27). The true ambition of a child of God 
is that “‘Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be 
by life, or by death’ (Philippians 1:20). That body is to 
be treated in honor; asceticism which neglects the body 
under the plea of humility is sinful (Colossians ii:23). The 
true believer heeds all these exhortations and instructions. 

It is very significant that connected with all these exhorta- 
tions there is not one single promise that, if the believer is 
obedient to these exhortations, he will be exempt from bodily 


118 THE HEALING QUESTION 


ills, or if he is suffering from infirmities of the flesh, instan- 
taneous relief will be given him. According to the theories 
of faith-healers Romans xii:1 should read ... “Present 
your bodies a living sacrifice and I will give you perfect health, 
you will never be sick.” Not alone this but a number of 
the outstanding believers in New Testament history, who 
yielded their bodies, who were not conformed to this world, 
who lived in separation, were sick, and one of them even sick 
unto death. We mean Paul, Epaphroditus, 'Trophimus and 
Timothy. The Holy Spirit has given us the record of these 
four so that we might know that true believers are not exempt 
from sickness and that the ‘Divine healing theories’? are 
not true, 

Why have the children of God sickness? Why do they 
suffer? Why do they often battle with bodily weakness 
and are troubled with infirmities? Our first answer has 
already been given. The children of God have bodies sub- 
ject to all kinds of infirmities and sickness. ‘Their bodily 
weaknesses and infirmities may be either inherited or ac- 
quired. Apart from this fact, only too apparent, sickness is 
sometimes permitted to come to believers for certain reasons. 

God permits sickness to come upon His children for His 
own glory. We know that divine healers repudiate the 
thought that God uses sickness at all. With them the devil 
does it all, and as previously stated, nearly every disease 
is looked upon as the work of demons. But this is not the 
teaching of the Bible, as it may be learned from numerous 
passages in the Word of God. When He permits sickness 
He also gives the strength to bear it in submission. ““The 
Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of lanquishing; Thou 
wilt make all his bed in sickness” (Psa. xli:3). It is then 
that the believer finds out that ‘His grace is sufficient” and 
“that His strength is made perfect in weakness.” With 


THE HEALING QUESTION 119 


every sickness, every infirmity and bodily affliction there is 
given an opportunity to glorify Him. To take it all from 
a loving Father’s hand, to trust Him through it all, to sing 
praises even in a night of suffering, that is what His grace 
can do and which glorifies Him. ‘To learn through bodily 
affliction the tender and kind priestly ministrations of Him, 
who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because 
He was tested in all things as we are, is still another bless- 
ing. If the children of God had no sickness, no pain, if 
they were exempt from all physical infirmities, as faith- 
healers claim they should be, they would be poorer and know 
but little of the comfort of the ever living High Priest. 

Therefore our Lord permits frequently sickness and in- 
firmities to come upon His children for their own good. 
Long ago one who was suffering from violent illness said, 
“The Lord puts us on our backs that He may teach us to 
look up.” The lesson of utter dependence on the Lord needs 
to be learned again and again. How soon we forget it! 
Then He lays His kind, loving, chastening hand upon us 
to teach the lesson anew and draw us closer to Himself, 
weaning us from the things of this passing age. Willingly 
we kiss the rod knowing “‘that all things must work together 
for good to them that love God.” Many thousands of 
Christians have testified that their most blessed com- 
munion with God was spent upon a bed of sickness, and of 
the deep and lasting blessings that have come in sickness 
through which they passed, either themselves or their dear 
ones. Thus many thousands testify as did the Psalmist, “It 
is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn 
Thy statutes” (Psalm cxix:71). Sickness may also have 
been sent on account of certain sins as it was with the 
Corinthians (1 Corinthians xi:30, 32). 

What then are the believer's resources in sickness? ‘The 


120 THE HEALING QUESTION 


answer is known to every child of God. Prayer! ‘The 
gracious calls to His beloved people to pray, to draw near 
to Him, to seek His face, to call upon His name, and the 
promises that He will hear and answer the believing cry of 
His depending child, are found in every portion of His Holy 
Word. “And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will 
deliver thee and thou shalt glorify Me” (Psalm 1:15). “In 
the day of my trouble I will call upon Thee, for ‘Thou wilt 
answer me” (Psalm Ixxxvi:7). ‘He shall call upon Me, and 
I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will de- 
liver him, and honor him” (Psalm xli:15). ‘“The Lord is 
nigh unto all them that call upon Him” (Psalm cxlv:18). 
Still more precious are the words of promise spoken by the 
Son of God, our Lord. ‘‘Ask and it shall be given unto. 
you” (Luke xi:9). ‘‘What things soever ye desire when 
ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have 
them” (Mark xi:24). ‘‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My 
name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in 
the Son. If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do 
it” (John xiv:13, 14). “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever 
ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you” 
(John xvi:23). To these promises, uttered by His own lips 
we add but two from the Epistles: “Be careful for nothing; 
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanks- 
giving let your requests be made known unto God” (Phi- 
lippians iv:6). ‘“‘And this is the confidence that we have in 
Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He 
heareth us; and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we 
ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of 
Him” (1 John v:14, 15). The child of God makes constant 
use of these promises. Someone asked us years ago, Do you 
believe in prayer? We would not be a true Christian if we 
did not believe in prayer. ‘The new life is born in prayer. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 121 


Prayer is the breath of the new nature. No Christian need 
to be told that it is his great privilege to pray when sickness 
comes and go at once with it to the Lord. The spiritual 
instinct of a true believer leads him to cry at once unto the 
heavenly Father for help and deliverance, if prostrated by 
disease, or if members of his family are ill. 

If we were writing on prayer, and traced the use of prayer, 
the answers to prayer, throughout the history of the Church, 
we would find how very prominent prayer in case of sickness 
is, and what a cloud of witnesses there are, that God hears and 
answers prayer in sickness. We confine ourselves to a very 
few illustrations. Dr. Martin Luther, that great man of 
God, cannot be accused of fanaticism. Sects like the 
Anabaptists and other extremists he denounced unmercifully. 
He had great faith in prayer when sickness came. Once he 
found his bosom friend Melanchthon sick unto death in 
Weimar. Luther beheld him deprived of sight, hearing, and 
unconscious. Then he exclaimed ‘‘God forbid! How has 
the devil disfigured this instrument.’ ‘Then he prayed a 
wonderful prayer in simple, child-like trust. He took 
Melanchthon by the hand and said: ‘“‘Be of good cheer, 
Philip, thou wilt not die. Give no place to the spirit of grief, 
nor become the slayer of thyself, but trust in the Lord, who 
is able to kill and to make alive.” He began to revive, and 
afterward said that “he would have been a dead man if he 
had not been recalled from death itself by the coming of 
Luther.” When Myconius, the superintendent at Gotha 
was in the last stage of consumption, Dr. Luther wrote him 
“May God not let me hear so long as [ live that you are dead, 
but cause you to survive me. [I pray this earnestly, and will 
have it granted. Amen.” Myconius began at once to regain 
strength. 

The Swiss reformer Henry Bullinger, living at the same time, 


122 THE HEALING QUESTION 


testified to the efficacy of prayer in sickness. He wrote, 
“Through confidence in the name of Christ numbers greatly 
afflicted and shattered with disease are restored afresh to 
health.”’ Richard Baxter, the author of so many excellent 
volumes, declared that many times he had known “the prayer 
of faith to save the sick, when all physicians had given them 
up as hopeless.’ George Fox, the founder of the Society 
of Friends, bears a similar testimony. Accounts of blessed 
answers to prayer in case of sicknesses are also recorded in the 
history of the Scottish Covenanters. Many pages could be 
filled with incidents upon incidents. ‘The “Journal” of John 
Wesley, the illustrious founder of Methodism, relates many 
answers to prayer in case of sickness. Zinzendorf, the 
founder of the Herrnhuters, known now as the Moravians, 
had strong convictions as to healing in answer to prayer, and 
influenced Wesley in this matter. We quote an experience 
in Wesley’s life as given in his Journal. “At our love-feast, 
besides the pain in my back and head, and the fever which 
still continued upon me just as I began to pray, I was seized 
with such a cough that I could hardly speak. I called on 
Jesus aloud to increase my faith and to confirm the Word of 
His grace. While I was speaking my pain vanished away, 
the fever left me, bodily strength returned, and for many 
weeks I felt neither weakness nor pain.’” Another interesting 
experience is related on another page of his “Journal,” “My 
old disorder returned as violent as ever. A thought came 
into my mind, ‘Why do I not apply to God in the beginning 
rather than in the end of my illness?’ I did so and found 
immediate relief, so that I needed no further medicine.” 
The following incident shows the child-like faith of this good 
man. ‘‘My horse was exceedingly lame, and my head ached 
more than it had done for some months. I then thought, 
‘Cannot God heal either man or beast, by any means or with- 


THE HEALING QUESTION 123 


out any?’ Immediately my weariness and headache ceased, 
and my horse’s lameness in the same instant, nor did he halt 
any more either that day or next. (What I here aver is the 
naked fact, and let every man account for it as he sees 
good).’”” Then he relates many others for whom he and 
others prayed in sickness, and the Lord answered the prayer 
of faith. John Wesley was frail; he had many infirmities; 
he had a good knowledge of medicine which he constantly 
used for himself and others. 

Thousands of God’s children have had similar experiences 
in case of sickness, demonstrating the fact thatGod hears and 
answers prayer. All true ministers of the Gospel, and those 
who have the gift as pastor, pray with the sick and can tell of 
many answered prayers. The writer has been preaching and 
teaching the Word of God for forty-five years. During these 
years hundreds of requests to pray for the sick and afflicted 
have reached us. Hundreds of times we visited the sick 
and knelt at their bedsides in homes and in hospitals, and 
many times we have seen His gracious answers in the raising 
up of the sick. Often we were sick, or loved ones were taken 
down with serious illness, and the Lord answered the cry for 
deliverance. But recently we had a case in our immediate 
family, which seemed hopeless. One of the most famous 
surgeons declared the case was beyond his skill. Unceasing 
prayer was made and the Lord answered so mercifully that 
speedy recovery set in after the serious operation, so that 
the surgeon declared it next to a miracle. 

We have given the one side and we must now look at the 
other side. Hundreds of Christians have cried to the Lord | 
in sickness and there was a gracious answer, but a vastly 
greater number testify, that they also cried to the Lord when 
sickness invaded their home, that they prayed in faith, 
agonized in prayer, implored the Lord to send deliverance, 


124 THE HEALING QUESTION 


asked others to join in prayer for healing, and there was no 
recovery, the loved one was snatched from their side. All 
the conditions mentioned in the Word of God in connection 
with effectual prayer. were met. There was simple faith. 
There was united prayer and perfect agreement. Humilia- 
tion, confession of sin and self-judgment were not overlooked, 
yet there was noresponse. ‘Thousands of invalids, all earnest 
believers, are living today, suffering from various afflictions. 
The prayer of faith has gone up in their behalf, prayer in His 
name, and the only reply which came from the throne of God 
was the reply the afflicted Apostle received, ‘““My Grace is 
sufficient for thee.” 

Both answered prayer in delivering from sickness, from 
the very jaws of death, and unanswered prayer, when sickness 
and afflictions remain unchanged and death comes, demon-’ 
strate what the creature of the dust is so prone to forget, 
the Sovereignty of God. God is sovereign in the control of the 
lives of His people. He controls their earthly lot and destiny, 
and we add His Sovereignty is the Sovereignty of infinite 
wisdom and infinite love. It was said of Him while on earth 
“He has done all things well.”’ Blessed assurance! Whether 
He answers the prayer in sickness by raising up the sick, or 
does not answer the prayer for deliverance and restoration, 
it must all be well, it will all be well. It is true faith which 
submits to His good will. How that Shunammite woman 
puts us to shame! When her boy was dead and the prophet 
put the question to her “Is it well?” she readily answered 
“It is well’? (2 Kings iv:26). 

Faith is not blind confidence that demands to get whatever 
we want, for this in effect, as one has said, would dethrone 
God, and place the sceptre in our hands, making God merely 
an obedient and irresisting power to do our unwise bidding. 

Dr. Brookes in quoting the prayer promises of our Lord 


THE HEALING QUESTION 125 


in John xiv:13, 14 and other passages remarked: “These are 
the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and there is no 
limitation upon the power they place within the hands of 
the believer. The only condition is faith and asking in the 
name of the Son of God, but it will be observed that the con- 
dition necessarily implies that the prayer is according to the 
written Word and the righteous will of God. Without this 
there might be fanaticism, but there could be no faith; 
there might be intense longing, but there could be no con- 
scious oneness with Christ, no asking as if He were express- 
ing His own desire through human lips, no breathing of the 
petition put by His Holy Spirit into the heart, all of which 
is implied in His direction to ask in His name. It is of the 
last moment to keep this in mind in our supplications.” 
“For example, it would not be in keeping with the condi- 
tion of these blessed promises to pray that we, or all Chris- 
tians on earth might be rich in this world’s possessions, be- 
cause there is no assurance in the written Word, that it is 
the will of our Father that all His children should be wealthy 
in gold and silver, in houses and lands, or that it would be 
best for them to own vast estates. Precisely so, there is no 
assurance in the written Word that our Father wills all of 
His children to be exempt from sickness during this dis- 
pensation of suffering, or that it would be best for them 
to be thus exempt. On the other hand, it is explicitly said, 
‘It is appointed unto men once to die’; and hence no amount 
of prayer or faith can set aside this decree, which must 
remain in force during the period of our Lord’s personal 
absence from the earth. It is a serious error to insist upon 
dragging into this age of cross-bearing what will be true 
only in the bright day of His return. Nor is there a single 
promise, nor one line, from the first verse in Genesis to the 
last of Revelation, that pledges God to grant His power in 


126 THE HEALING QUESTION 


response to prayer in every case of sickness, in little or great 
attacks.”’ 

_ And here we clash with ‘‘Divine healing”? once more. The 
men and women who go about the country holding “‘healing 
meetings” make statements which are more than unscrip- 
tural, they are presumptuous and audacious. Of course they 
believe in prayer and use prayer, but they make the bold 
declaration that when it comes to praying for the healing of 
the sick, one does not need to say “af zt#1s Thy will.” ‘To use 
this phrase, a leading Divine healing hypnotist said, is un- 
belief. One must be persuaded that it is His will and if it is 
His will the use of the words “‘if it is Thy will” only suggest 
doubt. ‘Their reasoning is something like this: God is not 
the author of evil, pain and disease, bodily infirmities are not 
according to His will; all sickness is the work of the devil; 
the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil; on the © 
cross He procured a double cure for a double curse, He died 
for our sins and for our diseases as well; therefore it is His will 
that those who believe on Him should be well, and if they 
are sick He will heal them, if they have faith, hence to pray 
“if it be Thy will” is unbelief. The whole argument as we 
have stated it, is positively wrong and has no scriptural basis 
whatever. The faith-healers of more than a generation ago 
did not use such extreme language. But there is a simple 
reason for this presumption. A hypnotist demands the 
complete yielding of the will of his subject. If this is not 
done he fails, and his power cannot work. That hypnotism 
underlies all these mass healing campaigns has been fully 
demonstrated. ‘The passes which are made, the falling over 
of the treated subjects, the suggestions made, the temporary 
relief experienced, and the fact that after the campaign ends, 
and the personality of the healer is withdrawn, results are 
no longer present, is sufficient evidence for this charge. 


THE HEALING QUESTION 127 


Every true believer who is spiritual shudders at the very 
thought of coming into the presence of a holy, righteous, 
sovereign God with the demand “Thou must!’ Such a 
demand coming from the lips of the creature of the dust is 
not faith, but presumption. It dishonors God. It insults 
Him and His authority. It exalts the creature above God 
in placing the finite wisdom of man above the infinite loving 
wisdom of God, who alone knows what is best for His 
children. It is written, “He gave them their request, but 
sent leanness into their soul” (Psalm cvi:15). Whata 
disaster it would be if every request brought into the presence 
of God should be answered according to our own will! 
Besides bringing leanness of soul it would result in every 
other evil. 

About forty-five years ago Dr. Joel Parker, one of the New 
York City preachers, known as a faithful servant of Christ, 
stated in public print that soon after he had entered the 
ministry a lady sent to him to pray for the recovery of her 
little son, who was dangerously ill. He kneeled beside the 
distressed mother and the cradle of the child, and asked God 
to arrest the disease, and spare the loved one, if consistent 
with His will. The lady caught him by the arm, and ex- 
claimed “I did not send for you to pray in that manner. I do 
not wish you to say, if it is God’s will. No matter what His 
will may be, it is my will that my child recover. I will not 
give him up; God must spare him to me.” God did spare him, 
and that same mother lived to know that the same boy was 
swung by the neck from the gallows for murder. 

The most essential element in believing prayer is to ask 
according to His will. It does not say “if we ask anything 
according to our will, He heareth us” but “if we ask anything 
according to His will, He heareth us.”? Without this prayer 


128 THE HEALING QUESTION 


is not real prayer, nor real faith, but dictation to God, which 
must be more obnoxious to Him than when a child comes to 
an earthly father and insists on having that which the father 
knows would only hurt his child. The highest prayer which 
lips of clay can pray is the prayer the Son of God prayed in 
dark Gethsemane—‘‘Nevertheless not My will but Thy will 
be done.”” And thus the child of God prays still, and such a 
prayer is acceptable and well pleasing in His sight. 

Let us not forget the perfect One, who cried from the verge 
of a frightful abyss yawning at His feet, “Now is My soul 
troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this 
hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father 
glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, 
saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again” 
(John xii:27, 28). The Father did not save the Son from the 
dreadful hour, but He glorified His name, and He exalted that : 
Son of His love to His own right hand in the heavenlies. 
Even so, let the weary, worn child of God on the bed of sick- 
ness and suffering cry with all earnestness, and full confidence 
i the power and willingness of our Father to help, “Save me 
from further pain’? but above the cry, let the nobler cry 
ascend, “‘Father glorify Thy name.” Three things are still 
left the tried and tired believer: the comforting word “My 
grace is sufficient for thee’; the cheering promise, “‘our light 
affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory’’; and the sweet 
assurance, though “‘no chastening for the present seemeth to 
be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward (the long 
afterward of eternity) it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of 
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.’’* 

In conclusion a word about means. Should a believer who 
is suffering in his body employ a physician, should he use 


*The Truth, Vol. XII, page 2183 


THE HEALING QUESTION 129 


means to counteract bodily ills? We have considered this 
question in the preceding chapter and found that the use of 
means and of a physician are perfectly scriptural and ra- 
tional. The rejection of means is unscriptural and irrational. 
Extreme faith-healers brand physicians as instruments for 
evil, and the use of means as of the devil. Not all go so far. 
But in all healing campaigns the medical profession is be- 
littled and ridiculed; means are put down as being worthless 
in any disease; surgery is branded as useless; these faith- 
healers only have a ‘‘cure-all!’’ ‘They either are ignorant of 
the achievements of medicine and surgery, or they are will- 
fully maligning these means. 

We have read a good deal of faith-healing literature, Chris- 
tian Science, Spirit healing, Mind curism, faith healing and 
Divine healing, but we have never found mention made of 
Luke, the beloved physician. Divine healers seem to ignore 
this man of God entirely. They do not consider that the 
Spirit of God calls him by this endearing term, and there is 
not the remotest hint given that 1t was wrong for him to be a 
physician. And what about the words of our Lord, ‘““They 
that be whole need not'a physician, but they that are sick’’? 
(Matthew ix:12). In these words the Lord speaks of the need 
of a physician in case of illness; he sanctions the employment 
of physicians, or at least, He carefully abstains from denounc- 
ing those who employ them. In the parable of the good 
Samaritan our Lord speaks of remedies used, without a word 
of disapproval. We have seen that the oil in James v:14 is 
not a sacramental matter, but the oil is used as a remedy. 
Once more we mention Timothy and the Spirit given prescrip- 
tion for the oft infirmities. Wine, not grape-juice, such as 
the Spirit of God commended to Timothy, is a stimulant, with 
toning effect upon the digestive organs. We also mention 
the case of the godly king Hezekiah in the Old Testament. 


130 THE HEALING QUESTION 


The prophet Isaiah was divinely instructed to tell the king 
touse aremedy. “Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it 
for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover” (Isaiah 
XXXvili:21). The Lord has the power to heal a boil without 
using a poultice of figs to bring the boil to a head and effect 
a cure. Would the Lord have healed Hezekiah if he had 
despised the appointed means? 

Years ago the writer, in connection with his work on the 
East Side of New York, employed a Christian woman to visit 
the neglected population in the tenement house districts. 
One cold November day she was taken down with a high 
fever. She sent for a member of the “Christian and Mis- 
sionary Alliance” and was anointed for healing. ‘The disease 
proved to be pneumonia. We called in a physician to verify 
the diagnosis. He said it was pneumonia and as she did 
not want any medical treatment, he recommended a good 
nurse. The good woman maintained throughout her illness 
that the Lord was healing her; but the disease ran its normal 
course. When the third stage was reached we asked the 
physician to come again. He said that the lungs were 
clearing except a certain part, and that poultices were now 
needed to loosen the phlegm. She refused and declared the 
Lord was healing her and He did not need flax-seed poultices. 
But she did not recover and after lingering for months she 
died. 

There is one text which these healers use frequently in 
their unjust denunciation of physicians and means. King 
Asa was punished by the Lord because “‘in his disease he 
sought not the Lord, but to the physicians” (2 Chronicles 
xvi:12). The use of this text gives a good illustration of how 
these men handle the Word of God. They say “If Asa had 
not sought the physicians, if he had trusted the Lord, he 
would not have died. If you go to a physician you do not 


THE HEALING QUESTION 131 


trust the Lord, but trust the physician.” But the case is 
entirely different. He died because he did not seek the 
Lord, humble himself before Him, confess his sins and aban- 
don his evil ways; he did not die because he sought the 
physicians. 

As we have shown, God in His kindness, anticipating man’s 
ruin and his physical needs, has deposited in nature His 
wonderful provisions to ameliorate sickness and to assist in 
its cure. ‘To reject God’s provision is sinful. 

The believer in sickness will first turn to the Lord and seek 
His face. He will also judge himself, confess his sins and 
failure. He will put himself into His gracious hands and 
ask Him for His blessing in a speedy and full recovery, if it 
pleases Him. He will not reject medical counsel, but use 
the means which are available, praying all the time that the 
Lord may bless these means for his restoration to health. 
This is the Scriptural and the sane way the believer follows 
in sickness, and we may be assured has the fullest approval 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘To know that we are in His hands 
as His children, that without His will not even a hair can fall 
from our heads, that all He sends and permits must work for 
good, to rest in His gracious will, without fear or anxiety, 
is the blessed portion of His beloved children. 

We cannot close this volume without directing the atten- 
tion of the reader to that better day which is in store for 
suffering humanity. That day will not come through new 
discoveries of the origin of certain diseases, nor through new 
schools of medicines, or forms of treatment, but the better 
day comes with our Lord’s return. His kingdom has not yet 
come, nor will it come till the Father sends Him back to earth 
the second time to claim His blood bought inheritance. The 
throne of all the earth belongs to Him, and when He takes 
that throne, as He must and as He will in God’s own time, all 


132 THE HEALING QUESTION 


things will be put under His feet. If disease could not stand 
in His presence when here in the garb of a servant, how much 
more will disease and death flee away, when He appears as 
King of kings and Lord of lords. When He sits upon the 
throne of His glory, and the nations have been brought into 
His kingdom, when every knee bows at His name and every 
tongue confesses Him, then the curse of sin, disease and pain, 
will be gone, and even groaning creation will be delivered of 
its groans and share in the blessings of the kingdom. Then 
the converted nations of the earth will join in with converted 
Israel in His praise: ““Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that 
is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my 
soul, and forget not all His benefits. Who forgiveth all thine 
iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life 
from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving kindness 
and tender mercies” (Psalm ciii:1-4). 

May that blessed day of glory come soon. Even so, come, 
Lord Jesus. Amen. 


Finis 








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an examination of 


The healing question; 


RC603 .G12 


Speer Library 


Princeton Theological Seminary 


0028 5520 


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